It was a record-shattering day for the Shepherd offense as the No. 3 Rams set a new benchmark for points in a game in Saturday's 70-24 Mountain East Conference win over West Virginia State.
Shepherd piled it on early and often, scoring on 10 of its 12 possessions while piling up 804 yards of offense.
"That's a really football team with some great athletes, but that doesn't excuse the fact that we have to play better," West Virginia State coach Jon Anderson said. "We're better than the way we played today. I'll take some steps and do some things in the coming days to try to get us to a point where we're able to play better than we did out there today.
"We have to be able to get some stops, we can't let them do that to us. We have to do better."
Connor Jessop filled in at quarterback for the Rams in place of Jeff Ziemba and took advantage of his chance. The junior signal-caller completed 22 of 28 passes for a program-best 480 yards and five touchdowns, while adding three carries for 65 yards and two more scores on the ground.
With Jessop - a Virginia Tech transfer who stepped in and led the Rams to a win in last year's Division II national semifinal - leading the offense, Shepherd had 19 plays that covered at least 15 yards and scored on five of those.
"He did a great job," Shepherd coach Monte Cater said of Jessop. "He was able to get rid of the football, pick out guys who were open and I thought he did a great job of controlling the offense and running the game smoothly."
West Virginia State (1-6) showed some life early on in the game, getting a big play on a 96-yard Dionta Brown kick return for a score that tied the game at 7-7 shortly after C.J. Davis scored for Shepherd on a 43-yard pass from Jessop. After a pair of Shepherd touchdown passes, the Yellow Jackets cut it to a one-possession game at the end of the first quarter when Matt Kinnick threw a beautiful touchdown pass over a pair of defenders to Quinton Gray.
But that was as close as WVSU would be able to get as the Rams took control in the second and third quarters.
Shepherd outscored the Yellow Jackets 42-3 over the next 30 minutes of play to break the game open and run away with its 16th consecutive MEC victory.
"We only stopped them once in the first half and, plain and simple, you're not going to win football games if you're playing like that," Anderson said. "You have to get stops, you have to get three-and-outs and get off the field, otherwise you get worn down and can't get the ball to your offense, and you saw that today."
The Rams (6-0) got rushing touchdowns in the second half from Patrick Griffin, Jessop and quarterback Nic Hammer before West Virginia State put an end to Shepherd's 35 unanswered points with a 3-yard touchdown run from Kinnick.
The one major blemish on a day that went about exactly as Shepherd could have hoped came in the form of penalties. The two teams were penalized a total of 30 times, with the Rams being called for 19 penalties that cost them 206 yards.
"We didn't anticipate something where we'd move it as well as we did and score this many points, and I was pleased with that," Cater said. "But the thing that really concerned me most was our number of penalties. Things were chippy early and, the bottom line is, that takes a little bit away from this one. But our kids worked hard and got after it and showed a lot of stuff to keep building on."
Davis caught nine passes for 251 yards and a pair of touchdowns for Shepherd, while Billy Brown hauled in two touchdowns of his own and had 120 yards and seven receptions. Brandon Hlavach led the Rams on the ground with five carries for 100 yards.
Kinnick, who had missed some time with an injury, returned to throw for 154 yards with a touchdown and an interception. Linebacker Dennis Gardeck had 10 tackles for the Yellow Jackets.
Contact Michael Carvelli at 304-348-4810 or michael.carvelli@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @carvelli3.