Marquette 33, Cadillac 27

MARQUETTE, Mich. — Marquette led 21-0 and needed all of the fourth quarter to keep that from being wasted.

The Sentinels scored twice in the final four minutes and beat Cadillac 33-27 on Saturday night at William R. Hart Stadium, their second straight win and their second in the Big North Conference.

The sequence that decided it ran about two minutes of clock and covered three possessions. Winston Leonard threw 20 yards to Brody Clements for the go-ahead touchdown with 3:21 left. The defense then held Cadillac to a run for no gain and three incomplete passes. Landen Faccio scored from 14 yards out on third down with 1:12 to play.

"We got up. They came back, and we could have went in the tank, but we didn’t," Marquette coach Eric Mason said afterward. "We overcame the adversity, and in the fourth quarter did what we needed to do and came out with a W."

Faccio carried 26 times for 119 yards and two touchdowns. Leonard completed 13 of 16 passes for 154 yards and two more, and ran six times for 34 yards and a score. Marquette finished with 306 yards, split almost exactly evenly between the run and the pass.

The start Marquette wanted

Cadillac took the opening kickoff and got one first down, on a penalty. On the next snap Dominic Wing rolled out and threw, and Clements picked it off and returned it to the Cadillac 39.

Faccio ran for 10, then for 15 to the Cadillac 14, before a holding penalty pushed Marquette back to first-and-17 at the 21. Leonard answered with a slant to Clements that reached the 1. A false start backed the Sentinels up again, Faccio was marked just short on first down, and he scored on the next carry. Eric Epper’s kick made it 7-0.

Cadillac went three-and-out, with Brecken Goodwin sacking Wing for a 9-yard loss on third down. Clements fielded the punt, broke a tackle, spun through another and was hauled down at the Cadillac 20.

Faccio carried the next four times and got to the 2. On third-and-goal, Leonard faked the handoff to him, kept it and scored. Epper’s kick made it 14-0 with 3:07 left in the quarter.

Cadillac’s best chance of the half followed, and it produced nothing. Back-to-back personal fouls on Marquette -- a late hit out of bounds, then another on the following snap -- carried the Vikings out of their own territory to the Marquette 20. They got no closer than the 16. On fourth down Wing faked a pitch and threw back across the field to Alex McGowan, who was tackled about 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage by Braylon Zdunek.

Three straight Cadillac penalties, and a 21-0 lead

Marquette took over at its own 25 and punted early in the second quarter, but a holding call on Cadillac’s return wiped the kick out and left the Sentinels with fourth-and-2 at their own 33. They kept the offense on the field. Cadillac jumped offside. A face-mask penalty on the next snap moved the chains again -- three Viking penalties in a row -- and put the ball at the Cadillac 47.

The drive nearly died there. Leonard was sacked for a 7-yard loss, then came back with a throw to Skyler Blackburn down the sideline for about 15 yards, and Faccio ran for the first down.

On second-and-8 from the 25, Blackburn caught a ball over the middle, got to the 5 with Travis Dickerson on his back and carried him into the end zone. Epper’s kick made it 21-0 with about eight minutes left in the second quarter.

Those were the last points Marquette scored for more than a half of football.

Cadillac finds the edge

Cadillac had 63 yards of offense in the first half, 33 on the ground and 30 through the air. The Vikings finally reached the end zone in the last two minutes, after a pass-interference call on Marquette on a completion to Baron Hellowell gave them first-and-goal at the 5. Wing lost 5 on a keeper. From the 10, Ian Metzger took it around the corner and scored with 17 seconds left. Eli Wilson’s kick made it 21-7.

Marquette had eight seconds and the ball at the Cadillac 47 after another Clements return, and threw twice. Metzger intercepted the first. Johnny Daniels intercepted the second and returned it for a touchdown. Both were wiped out by Cadillac penalties, and the half ended.

Marquette’s first play of the second half was a fumble. Leonard kept the ball on a run, lost it, and Cadillac recovered at the Marquette 43. The Vikings drove to the Marquette 23 and were stopped there on fourth-and-inches when Josiah Youngren met Nobles in the backfield.

From there Marquette put together the strangest drive of the night. Faccio broke a 28-yard run to the Cadillac 43. Leonard kept the next one on a naked waggle and ran to the 20 -- and an illegal chop block brought it back. Leonard then hit Clements deep, and offensive pass interference brought that back too. First-and-10 had become first-and-35 at the Marquette 31.

A 27-yard screen to Faccio got most of it back, but the drive ended on a fourth-and-1 stop at the Cadillac 35.

Twenty-one points, gone

Cadillac had found something. The Vikings kept getting outside, moving Metzger, Nobles and Dickerson to the perimeter on quick tosses, and covered 65 yards. A pass-interference penalty on Marquette put the ball at the 8, and Metzger scored from there on third down. Wilson’s kick made it 21-14 late in the third quarter.

Marquette went three plays and faced another fourth-and-1, this time at its own 40. It did not convert. Cadillac took over there, carried the drive into the fourth quarter and kept going. Nobles picked up a first down on third-and-2, Wing found Metzger for another, and Nobles ran in from the 16. Wilson’s kick tied it at 21 with 9:50 to play.

Marquette’s first three possessions of the second half had produced a lost fumble and two turnovers on downs. The fourth one had to be different.

Touchdown, stop, touchdown

It started at the Marquette 28 and it needed three conversions. On third-and-6, Leonard pulled it down and ran 19 yards. On another third-and-6, he threw 9 yards to Wesley Robinson. On fourth-and-3 from the Cadillac 32, he found Clements on a slant to the 20.

Two snaps later, on second-and-9, Leonard looked for Clements again in the back of the end zone. Clements caught it with one hand. Epper’s extra point was no good, and Marquette led 27-21 with 3:21 on the clock.

Cadillac started at its own 35 after the kickoff went out of bounds. Metzger was stopped at the line. Wing’s next throw was nearly intercepted by Clements. The third fell incomplete under pressure from Connor D’Ambrosio and Tyler Hendrickson. So did the fourth-down throw, with 2:15 left.

Leonard ran 17 yards on the next play. Two more carries brought up third-and-7 from the 14. Faccio took the handoff, got around the edge, cut it back inside and scored.

Epper’s kick was no good, but Cadillac was called for roughing the kicker. Marquette took the penalty and went for two instead; the pass was tipped at the line. It was 33-21 with 1:12 left.

Cadillac had one more drive, and Marquette helped it along. Tyler Hendrickson and Russell Bess sacked Wing on first down, but the Sentinels were called for too many men on the field and the Vikings got a first down instead. Cadillac reached the Marquette 25, and Wing threw a touchdown pass to Hellowell on the last play. No extra point was attempted.

What it means

Marquette is 2-2 overall and 2-0 in the Big North Conference. Cadillac, which came in 2-0 in the league after a 34-21 win over Alpena and a 28-0 win at Gaylord, is 2-2 and 2-1.

The penalties were the one thing Mason did not like, and he drew a line through the middle of them.

"I’m not upset when we get penalties that happen during the play," he said. "It’s the after-the-play, after-the-whistle stuff that drives me nuts, and we didn’t have any today. But we’ve got to clean it up. We can’t have that many."

He was more interested in the offensive line. "Our line, more than anything, was a heck of a lot of improvement, which is the best we could hope for," Mason said. "And that’s a good team right there."

Next is homecoming, and Escanaba, which is where Mason went to high school.

"With Escanaba, I root for them eight out of the nine games," he said, "and next week will be a game that I won’t root for them."

Kickoff is 7 p.m. Friday at William R. Hart Stadium.

Statistics compiled from the Fox Sports Marquette broadcast and are unofficial.