Perfect ending

St. John's wins D-III title to cap off Gagliardi's record-breaking season

SALEM, Va. (AP) -- St. John's provided a perfect ending for coach John Gagliardi's record-breaking season, snapping Mount Union's NCAA-record 55-game winning streak with a 24-6 victory Saturday in the Division III championship game.

Mount Union (13-1) had won three consecutive Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowls and 109 of its last 110 games overall before falling to Blake Elliott and the Johnnies (14-0). The Purple Raiders had won seven national titles in the previous 10 years.

Gagliardi, the 77-year-old coach who passed Eddie Robinson as college football's career victories leader earlier this season, won his fourth national championship and first since the 1976 Division III title.

"It's beyond words," Gagliardi said on the field after the game. "It's hard to think what this means. We beat a great team out there."

Elliott, who won the Gagliardi Trophy as the top player in Division III, gave St. John's a 17-6 lead with a 51-yard touchdown run with 13:34 left. The Johnnies clinched the victory less than five minutes later on Mike Zauhar's 100-yard interception return for a touchdown.

St. John's, forcing Mount Union to play from behind in the second half for only the third time in its last 56 games, had three of its four interceptions in the second half, stifling any chance the school from Alliance, Ohio, had to keep its record streak alive.

The crowd of 5,073 on a frigid day at Salem Stadium including three planeloads of fans from near Collegeville, Minn., where St. John's was founded by Benedictine monks in 1857.

St. John's, which lost 10-7 to Mount Union in the 2000 Stagg Bowl, took a 7-6 lead on the last play of the first half when Jake Theis took a lateral from Ryan Keating and ran down the left sideline for a 14-yard score, driving through several defenders and diving to get the ball into the end zone.

The play finished off a 14-play, 73-yard, four-minute march kept alive by Keating's 2-yard sneak on fourth-and-1 from the Purple Raiders 26. Theis had an 11-yard run and Josh Nelson a 10-yarder in the drive.

The Johnnies became the first team to score a second-quarter touchdown this season against Mount Union, which had outscored its opponents 249-6.

Brandon Keller's 22-yard field goal in the third quarter pushed the lead to 10-6, and Elliott and Zauhar provided the clinchers.

The Purple Raiders, held scoreless in the first quarter for the first time this season, broke through on the first play of the second quarter.

Rick Ciccone's 1-yard run capped a 74-yard drive highlighted three plays earlier by Burghardt's 16-yard pass to John Healy over the middle on third-and-15 from the Johnnies 19. The extra point was blocked, and the Purple Raiders only other threat ended with Zauhar's interception.