Jaylin Baker's Last-Second TD Lifts Stonehill Past LIU 18-14

For 59 minutes and 55 seconds on Long Island, this game looked like it would be remembered for a safety, a blocked kick and a pile of punts. Then Jaylin Baker went up in the left side of the end zone, and everybody forgot about all of that.

Jack O'Connell found Baker for a 32-yard touchdown with five seconds left, and Stonehill stunned LIU 18-14 on Saturday, Oct. 24, at Bethpage Federal Credit Union Stadium in Brookville, N.Y. The Skyhawks were behind 14-11 with 3:03 to play. They left with a win that hands the Sharks their first league loss of the season.

Stonehill improved to 3-5 overall and 2-1 in the NEC, its best start in league play since it joined the conference in 2022. LIU fell to 3-6 and 3-1.

Two points before anyone sat down

The Skyhawks did not wait long to make a mark. On LIU's opening possession, quarterback Gianni Marino was sacked, coughed up the ball and fell on it in the LIU end zone. The safety came at 14:14 of the first quarter, and Stonehill led 2-0 less than a minute into the game. It was the program's first safety since 2023, which, fittingly, also came against LIU.

Stonehill got the ball back on the free kick and turned it into more points. Domenic Scalese drilled a 29-yard field goal at 12:03 of the first quarter, and it was 5-0. Nobody scored again until the third quarter.

That is not because nothing happened. It is because both defenses spent the first half winning, and Stonehill punter Logan Chenette spent it flipping the field. Chenette pinned LIU at its own 4 in the first quarter, and the Sharks then failed on a fourth-and-1 from their own 24 on that same drive. A 45-yard Chenette punt at the end of the first half put LIU at its 10. Stonehill took a 5-0 lead into the locker room.

The block that flipped it

LIU found its spark the way games like this often turn, on special teams. Early in the third quarter, the Sharks blocked another Scalese field goal try and returned it to the end zone. The touchdown at 11:27 of the third quarter put LIU ahead 7-5, and it had done it without its offense doing much of anything.

Stonehill answered with its best drive of the day. O'Connell found Alijah Turner for an 18-yard touchdown with 5:26 left in the third quarter, and the Skyhawks were back in front 11-7. Chenette kept working, too. A 53-yard punt in the third quarter pinned LIU at its 15.

The Sharks still had one more push in them. Late in the fourth quarter, Marino found senior Luca Stanzani for a 6-yard touchdown with 3:03 remaining, and LIU led 14-11. For an LIU team that had not lost in NEC play, the script looked familiar. Hang around, make one more play, win the game.

The goal-line stand that kept it close

Before any of that, Stonehill's defense made the stop that gave its offense a chance at the end. The Skyhawks stuffed LIU on fourth down at the goal line, a sequence the program's football account celebrated in real time. In a game decided by four points, that is the stand that mattered most.

Stonehill held LIU to 182 total yards. Jordan Irvine made nine tackles, including two for loss, and broke up a pass. Adjatay Abegesah, a junior linebacker, had two sacks and five tackles. For LIU, redshirt senior linebacker Rafael Fasolino had six tackles, five of them solo, with 1.5 tackles for loss and an interception returned 24 yards.

Five seconds left

Stonehill got the ball back trailing by three with a little more than three minutes to work with. O'Connell, a fifth-year quarterback, moved the Skyhawks to the LIU 32. A field goal would have meant overtime. Stonehill wanted more than that.

With five seconds on the clock, O'Connell threw into the left side of the end zone. Baker worked around an LIU defender and came down with an acrobatic catch for the 32-yard touchdown. Stonehill 18, LIU 14. Game over.

The Stonehill football account summed it up on the spot: "ARE YOU KIDDING???" It is hard to argue with that.

The players who decided it

Baker, a sophomore receiver from San Antonio, caught seven passes for 103 yards. Baker became the first Stonehill receiver to go over 100 yards since Brigham Dunphy did it against Duquesne in 2024, and the first Skyhawk wideout to top 100 yards this season. The NEC named Baker its Co-Offensive Player of the Week.

O'Connell completed 19 of 35 passes for 233 yards and two touchdowns. O'Connell now ranks fifth in Stonehill history with 4,055 career passing yards and sixth with 34 touchdown passes. Aidan Garrett did the dirty work on the ground with 84 yards on 21 carries, which helped Stonehill keep the ball away from LIU on a day when every possession mattered.

And Chenette deserves more than a footnote. Chenette averaged 47.2 yards on five punts, including a season-long 61-yarder, and dropped three inside the 20. The NEC made Chenette its Special Teams Player of the Week. In a game where the winning team scored 18 points, field position was half the battle, and Chenette won most of it.

The numbers behind the comeback

The final margin was four points, so every mistake counted. LIU's offense was held to 182 yards, and one of its two touchdowns came from the field goal unit, not the offense. Stonehill gave up a blocked field goal for a touchdown and still won, which says plenty about the rest of the afternoon. The Skyhawks had Garrett's steady work on the ground, O'Connell's 233 yards through the air and a defense that never let LIU settle in.

LIU, meanwhile, will look back at the safety on the first series and the fourth-down stop at the goal line. Take either one away and the final five seconds might never have mattered. The details are in Stonehill's official recap (opens in a new tab).

What it means and what is next

The NEC race just got more interesting. LIU had been rolling in league play, and this was its first conference loss of the season. Stonehill, at 2-1, now has a real stake in the conversation after losing to Duquesne a week earlier.

Next on the schedule was a home game against Mercyhurst on Saturday, Oct. 31, when Stonehill planned to rededicate its field in honor of Timothy J. Coughlin, a member of the Stonehill Class of 1980. After that comes a trip to Central Connecticut on Nov. 7, a game that could carry a lot of weight in the standings.

For LIU, the job is to regroup. The Sharks are still 3-1 in the league, and one loss does not end anything. But the way this one ended will sting for a while. LIU led with three minutes to go and lost on the last real play of the game.

The last word

A week after losing 14-7 to Duquesne, Eli Gardner's team found itself in another one-score fight. This time, the close game broke Stonehill's way, and it broke that way because a sophomore receiver made the biggest catch of the day with five seconds left.

Baker's catch will be the clip that gets passed around. But the win was built on a safety in the first minute, a fourth-down stand at the goal line and a punter who kept LIU backed up all afternoon. On a day like this, that is how an 18-14 game gets won.

Sources: Stonehill Athletics recap and Northeast Conference weekly report. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Stonehill Athletics.