Matt Mascia (70) and the Wildcats celebrated a season opening win and more Thursday night. (Courtesy photo by Gil Talbot/UNH Athletics)

DURHAM, N.H. – The 27-21 win at Stony Brook on Thursday night was a long time coming. A very long time.

The last time the University of New Hampshire football team got to sing and yell and cheer and celebrate a victory in the locker room immediately after a game was November 23, 2019.

They’ll aim to whoop it up again after their second game of the season, their home opener against Towson, another Colonial Athletic Association rival, this Saturday at 6 p.m. in Wildcat Stadium.

Thursday night’s triumph was extra special.

For Sean McDonnell, as the head coach, it had been an even longer haul than for the team, thanks to a season lost to his own illness and the 2020 campaign being canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oh, he got to celebrate that November 2019 victory and certainly it was a nice one: over bitter rival Maine in Wildcat Stadium, a win that brought the coveted Brice-Cowell Musket back to Durham. But McDonnell had watched that game from high above the sidelines in the stadium, unable to be on the field.

That’s how he spent that season, sidelined you might say. Out on a medical leave as he battled cancer. He was part of the team, to be sure, but was limited in what he could do. He attended the home games and joined the team in the locker room afterwards. But Ricky Santos was the interim head coach and he and defensive coordinator John Lyons and the rest of the staff guided the team on the field.

So go back further, back to November 10, 2018, and Albany, N.Y. That’s where Coach Mac last celebrated a win as the fully involved head coach of the Wildcats. One thousand and twenty-seven days passed between those celebrations. Well over two years, pushing three.

Until Thursday night in Stony Brook.

The Wildcats, led by sophomore quarterback Bret Edwards in his second career start and playing tremendous defense, jumped out to a 20-0 lead at the half and pushed it to 27-0 early in the third period and all was going well.

Then it wasn’t.

The Seawolves scratched back into the game with a couple of touchdowns and were taking advantage of the turnovers UNH took advantage of earlier. They quickly cut the score to 27-14.

It stayed that way until there was just 3:03 left in the fourth quarter and Stony Brook scored again and now it was 27-21.

“You’re sitting there and played pretty good for 50-60 percent of the game,” McDonnell said early Friday afternoon after a bus ride that delivered his team back to Durham at 4:45 a.m. “The last minute of the game your throat’s a little tight.”

Stony Brook got the ball back with exactly two minutes left on its own 44-yard line. The Seawolves earned a couple of first downs and were on the UNH 19 with a 4th and 3 with 21 seconds to play.

Junior tackle Niko Kvietkus and the defense pressured quarterback Tyquell Fields and his final pass fell incomplete.

Soon, the celebration was on in the UNH locker room.

“It’s a feeling you can’t explain,” said senior safety Pop Bush who had a monster game with 10 tackles, an interception and return for 65 yards, a forced fumble, a sack and a couple of pass breakups, of the mood in the locker room. “Your stomach is up in your heart.”

There was much to celebrate. A season-opening win, made even sweeter by it being on the road and against a CAA opponent. A breakout game by Edwards, who passed for his first three career touchdowns as he replaced sophomore Max Brosmer who is out for the season with a knee injury.

They celebrated their chance to play football again.

And most of all they celebrated the return of coach McDonnell and his 99th regular season CAA win: only two coaches have ever hit the 100-win mark in the league.

“It was cloud 9,” said senior center Matt Mascia, who had been named a captain two nights before the game. “Everyone was so much more excited than usual. It’s been a while since we sang and the last time we did sing in the locker room it was with Ricky leading us. You could tell how much this meant to all of us to have Mac back there for us. He’s a legend. He’s a living legend right now. To have him with us and leading us from the front. You just want to do everything you can for that guy.”

It was a memorable first road-trip in a long time.

“With our pregame speech Friday night, you could tell how much it meant for Coach Mac to be back out there,” Mascia said. “Like he said, he hasn’t been on the road since November of 2018. To have him there with us meant everything. . . . We were all juiced up. We were all ready to go. You’ve got to say to yourself, ‘got to flip the switch, got to go to bed and got to save that for the next day.'”

They saved plenty and came out on fire.

“It’s a great road win,” McDonnell said. “The kids were resilient and played hard. Found a way to win in a tough opener. Proud of that. Happy with that. There are a lot of things that can be corrected, that are good things that we know we can get through practice in the next couple days.”