UNH QB Bret Edwards passed for his 10th TD of the season against Elon. (Photo courtesy of UNH Athletics)

DURHAM – The University of New Hampshire football team took one on the chin this past weekend at Elon and now the focus is on looking ahead, not back.

Th Wildcats have lost their last four contests and slipped to 3-4 overall and evened their record at 2-2 in the Colonial Athletic Association

They come home to play Richmond in Wildcat Stadium for a Halloweekend contest this Saturday at 1 p.m.

A major part of the postgame message Saturday was that this is no time to linger on a loss.

“Just keep our heads up,” said sophomore defensive back Randall Harris, who had one of two turnovers collected by the Wildcats against Elon.

The Wildcats planned to invoke their normal 24-hour rule of thinking about Saturday’s game before moving on to preparation for Richmond, which has lost its last five games.

“It’s OK to feel sorry for ourselves right now and down in the dumps,” Harris said. “But at the end of the day we still have a lot of CAA games left. There’s always an opportunity. You never know what can happen in this league. Anybody can lose on any given day. The idea is to keep our heads up and be ready to go back to work.”

Harris picked off a Davis Cheek pass and returned to 27 yards to the Elon 43 to set up UNH’s only touchdown of the game.

“We just got nothing going in the second half at all,” said UNH coach Sean McDonnell. “We played decently on defense in the second half after their one drive, it was just disappointing we couldn’t find a way to win a game here. . . . Very disappointing, a tough loss for us. Disappointed in the fact we had a chance to win this football game.”

Elon’s defensive pressure caused problems for Edwards and the Wildcats.

“They got us off balance,” McDonnell said. “I thought Bret was running for his life a couple of times and he made plays and he was running for his life a couple of times and had to throw it away. I’ll take a look at the tape, it’s hard to see what was going on. I thought they extended their pressure a little more than they had.”

Now come the Spiders for Halloween Eve.

Richmond won its first two games of the season against Howard, 38-14, and Lehigh, 31-3, but has lost five straight at Villanova, 34-27, and Virginia Tech, 21-10; at home against Elon, 20-7, and James Madison, 19-3; and at Stony Brook, 27-14.

The Spiders turned the ball over six times in Saturday’s loss at Stony Brook: they lost four fumbles and senior quarterback Joe Mancuso, who returned from a thumb injury, had two of his passes intercepted.

Richmond features the defender who leads the CAA in tackles in linebacker Tristan Wheeler (he has 68) and one of the most versatile offensive weapons in the league.

Running back Aaron Dykes has scored seven touchdowns. He has carried the ball 80 times for 321 yards and four TDs. He has 17 catches for 133 yards and two scores. And he has returned a kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown.

The Spiders are last in the CAA in turnover margin at minus-5. UNH is fifth in that category at plus-4.

Grad student safety Evan Horn forced a fumble that freshman linebacker Max Tillett recovered for UNH’s second turnover against Elon.

The Wildcats are tied for second in the league with nine interceptions as a team.

The Harris pick was only the third off Cheek this year.

“It’s a rare sight for Cheek to overthrow a pass,” Harris said. “He was trying to throw to No. 2 on a seam route and it kind of just ended up in my hands. I saw I had a lead block from one of our safeties, Evan Horn, and I just went with it.”

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