Gavin Lochow's Late TD Lifts Dayton Past San Diego 37-32

San Diego threw for 471 yards, took the lead with 92 seconds to play and still went home with a loss. That is what happens when the other team has Gavin Lochow.

The senior receiver caught a 14-yard touchdown pass from Bryce Schondelmyer with 57 seconds left, and Dayton beat San Diego 37-32 on Saturday, Oct. 24, at Welcome Stadium. It was Lochow's third touchdown of the day, and it capped a three-play answer to a Toreros comeback from a 28-10 hole.

Dayton improved to 6-1 overall and 3-1 in the Pioneer Football League, with a third straight win and a perfect 4-0 mark at home. San Diego, the preseason favorite in the league, fell to 3-5 and 2-3. The 3,645 fans in attendance got their money's worth.

A 10-0 hole, then a 97-yard answer

San Diego started like the team everybody expected in the preseason. Emiliano Salazar opened the scoring with a 29-yard field goal, and Adam Criter followed with a 5-yard touchdown run. It was 10-0 Toreros, and Dayton had not done much of anything.

Then LeRoy Lewis IV fielded the ensuing kickoff and went 97 yards for a touchdown. The return got Dayton on the board and started a run of 28 unanswered points. Lewis, a sophomore, finished with 160 yards on four kickoff returns and was named the PFL Special Teams Player of the Week.

The Flyers took the lead early in the second quarter on Mason Hackett's 4-yard run. Then Schondelmyer found Lochow for a 10-yard touchdown to close the first-half scoring, and Dayton went into the break up 21-10.

Lochow takes over

The second half started even better. On Dayton's first possession of the third quarter, Lochow took the ball and ran 56 yards for a touchdown, the longest run of the senior's career. It was 28-10, and Dayton had scored 28 straight points.

San Diego is not built to go away quietly, though, and Dom Nankil kept throwing. Nankil found Elijah Taylor for a 39-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter, and Dayton added a field goal, so the Flyers took a 31-17 lead into the fourth.

The comeback that almost worked

The fourth quarter belonged to the San Diego offense, at least for a while. Criter scored again, and the Toreros pulled within 31-24. Then San Diego recovered a fumbled kickoff return at the Dayton 22, and suddenly the Toreros were in range to cut into the lead again.

Dayton's Jalen Brooks made sure that did not happen. Brooks blocked Salazar's 39-yard field goal attempt, and the Flyers kept their seven-point lead. On a day when the Dayton defense gave up a lot of yards, that was the play it needed most.

San Diego kept coming. Criter capped a 94-yard drive with a 7-yard touchdown run, Criter's third rushing score of the game, and then caught the two-point conversion. With 1:32 left, San Diego led 32-31.

Three plays to win it

Dayton needed only three plays to answer. Schondelmyer moved the Flyers down the field, then found Lochow from 14 yards out with 57 seconds remaining. The Flyers led 37-32, and San Diego's final possession came up empty.

It was a fitting finish for Lochow, who had already scored once through the air and once on the ground. The senior from Proctorville, Ohio, was named the PFL Offensive Player of the Week.

The players who decided it

Lochow caught 11 passes for 83 yards and two touchdowns, and the 56-yard touchdown run and a 6-yard kickoff return pushed the senior to 146 all-purpose yards. Lochow scored the last Dayton touchdown of the first half, the first one of the second half and the winner. Lochow came into the season on the preseason watch list for the Walter Payton Award and as a Stats Perform preseason third-team All-American. The PFL notes that Lochow was a first-team all-league pick last year as both a receiver and a special teams player, and was named Dayton's team MVP. This was the kind of game that explains all of it.

Schondelmyer completed 26 of 38 passes for 259 yards and two touchdowns without an interception. Hackett ran 11 times for 71 yards and a score, and Lewis gave Dayton the special teams spark it needed when the game was getting away early.

On the other side, the San Diego passing numbers were enormous. Nankil completed 37 of 56 passes for 471 yards and a touchdown with no interceptions. Taylor caught 15 passes for 204 yards, and San Diego had two receivers go over 100 yards. Criter carried 20 times for 57 yards and scored all three of the Toreros' rushing touchdowns. Criter and Salazar both came into the season as returning first-team All-PFL picks, and Salazar is the league's reigning Special Teams Player of the Year. Nankil's 471 yards also went straight onto the PFL's running list of 400-yard passing games. On most Saturdays, numbers like that win.

The stats that matter

The yardage says San Diego should have won this game. The scoreboard says the opposite, and the difference was special teams. Dayton scored seven points on a kickoff return and took three points off the board with a blocked field goal. That is a 10-point swing in a five-point game.

Dayton's defense bent all afternoon against a quarterback who threw 56 times, and it gave up a 94-yard drive when the game was on the line. But between San Diego's 10-0 start and the fourth quarter, the Toreros scored just once, and the block by Brooks took three more points off the board. The Flyers' offense did the rest. The Fox Sports box score (opens in a new tab) has the full numbers, and the PFL recap (opens in a new tab) walks through every score.

What it means and what is next

The PFL race is now a four-way tie at the top. Dayton, Butler, St. Thomas and Marist are all 3-1 in league play, and nobody in the league is unbeaten. For a Dayton team picked fourth in the preseason poll, that is a very good place to be. The Flyers' only loss came at Drake, and they have now won at Butler and beaten San Diego in a span of two weeks.

Next on the schedule was a trip to Stetson on Saturday, Oct. 31, in a series the Flyers led 6-1. After that, Dayton hosts Valparaiso on Nov. 7 and Davidson on Nov. 14 before finishing at Presbyterian on Nov. 21.

San Diego is in a tougher spot. The Toreros came into the season as the league favorite, and they are now 2-3 in PFL play. All three league losses have come on the road, at St. Thomas, at Butler and now at Dayton, while both league wins came at home. Next on the schedule was a home game against Marist on Saturday, Oct. 31, a game that mattered for both teams. San Diego leads that series 16-2, but Marist won the last meeting, 19-14, in 2025. The Toreros then head to Drake and play Stetson to close the season.

The last word

San Diego did almost everything it needed to do. It threw for 471 yards, came back from a 28-10 deficit and took the lead in the final two minutes. Then Dayton put the ball in the hands of its best player, and Lochow did the rest.

In a league race this tight, the Flyers just picked up a win that could matter in late November. They got it because a sophomore returned a kickoff 97 yards, a defender got a hand on a field goal and a senior receiver caught the last touchdown of the day.

Sources: Pioneer Football League recap and weekly release, and the Fox Sports box score. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Pioneer Football League.