Every college football team has a turning point in its season, and for Navy, it came after the Midshipmen lost at Duke on Sept. 13. Along with the typical concerns about the team's injury-hampered offense and its mistake-prone defense, there were legitimate questions about the readiness of first-year head coach Ken Niumatalolo.
"I was fortunate to have been here with Paul [Johnson], but I knew that I was stepping into a pressure cooker and people were doubting that we could get it done," Niumatalolo said.
So when Niumatalolo returned to his third-floor office at Ricketts Hall two days after the Duke game, with his team's record at 1-2, he knew that the approach he would take with his assistants at their regular 6 a.m. meeting and later with his players might affect the kind of season Navy would have.
"I didn't come in and throw chairs around," Niumatalolo recalled this week. "I had been through the fire with these guys. I knew we'd get it done. The biggest thing I had to show them as a staff and as a team: There's a sense of urgency, but we weren't going to panic."
Niumatalolo's approach worked. The Midshipmen won three straight games in the toughest stretch of their schedule - beating Rutgers at home, as well as No. 16 Wake Forest and Air Force on the road - to fortify what would become an 8-4 regular season.
When Navy plays the 7-5 Demon Deacons again in Saturday's inaugural EagleBank Bowl at RFK Stadium in Washington, Niumatalolo, 43, will have gone from doubted to distinguished, becoming the first Navy coach to lead his team to a bowl game in his first season.
With a victory over the Demon Deacons, now unranked but still favored, Niumatalolo can become only the fourth Navy coach to win at least nine games in his first year and the first to do it since the Midshipmen went 9-0-1 under Bill Ingram in 1926.
Paul Johnson, who was 2-10 in his first season at Navy before turning the program around, said what Niumatalolo, who was assistant head coach and offensive line coach under Johnson, has accomplished is praiseworthy despite the fact that he was left an experienced team and a program that had put together five straight winning seasons under Johnson.
"I think anytime you can win [at least] nine games at Navy, it's a remarkable achievement," said Johnson, who did it twice in six years in Annapolis.
