Six Lancers Picked for 30th Annual Morris All-Star Team

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Worcester Area Football Association has selected the 30^th Annual Steve "Merc" Morris All-Star Team, and six members of the Worcester State University program were honored on this year's release.

Sophomore wide receiver Ke'Vaughn Davis (Utica, N.Y.)  was named Rookie of the Year for the association, which also includes student-athletes from Anna Maria, Assumption, Fitchburg State, Holy Cross, Nichols and WPI. He was also named to the First Team at wide receiver.

Second team selections include offensive lineman Mike Mahoney (Worcester, Mass.), defensive lineman Matt O'Connor (Selkirk, N.Y.), linebacker Brad Baxter (Goffstown, N.H.), defensive back Noah Peterson (Millbury, Mass.) and quarterback Mike Loveless (Nashua, N.H.), who was selected at the All-Purpose/Special Teams position.

Davis led the Lancers, and the MASCAC, with 13 receiving touchdowns, 70 receptions and 1132 receiving yards. He was the only player in the conference to average more than 100 yards per game, helped by the fact that he had six games with over 100 receiving yards.

In his first collegiate game, Davis went for 220 yards and two touchdowns, marking the fourth highest single-game receiving yardage total in Worcester State football history. It was also the first of four multi-touchdown games for Davis, which included a two-score effort against Fitchburg State and three-touchdown days against mass. Maritime and Western Connecticut. His 13 receptions against the Buccaneers is the fifth most in a game for the Lancers, while his season total of 70 receptions trails only the 85 of AJ Scerra (2012) for the most in a season.

Peterson led the Lancers with 81 tackles, including a team-high 57 solo tackles, and nine pass breakups. He had a forced fumble and four breakups on Senior Day against Framingham State, where he also had ten tackles. Peterson had double-digit tackles four times this season, and racked up three tackles for a loss and one interception.

Mahoney, the most dominant lineman on the Worcester State front, started all ten games he appeared in. He also appeared in all ten games in his freshman season in 2019. This year, he blocked for a backfield that averaged 86 yards per game on the ground and found the endzone 12 times.

Loveless was a swiss-army knife for the Lancer offense, scoring touchdowns in eight of ten games, whether it be on the ground or through the air. As a rushing quarterback, he found the end zone seven times on 30 rush attempts. Four of those rushing TD's came in a 38-35 win over Fitchburg State. Loveless also threw for five touchdowns, going 28-46 through the air for 362 yards and a passing efficiency of 158.5.

At the linebacker spot, Baxter racked up 54 tackles, including 6.5 tackles for a loss. He had a massive sack for a loss of ten yards at Plymouth State on October 23^rd, and piled up 11 tackles, including 1.5 for a loss, in a three-point win over Westfield on November 6^th.

In his rookie year, O'Connor had 45 tackles and two sacks on the Worcester defensive line. He was a force in the September 18^th win over Fitchburg State, with 11 tackles and a sack for a loss of seven yards. He also recorded a sack, along with nine stops, in the win at Westfield, and had a tackle for a loss in the October 16^th road win at Mass. Maritime.

Selected by the Sports Information Directors of Worcester County, the Worcester Area Football Association All-Star Team is named in the memory of Steve "Merc" Morris, the longtime Assistant Director of Athletics for Media Relations and Assumption Hall of Famer. "Merc" was a 1972 graduate of Assumption and was a member of the athletics staff for 39 years before passing away in January of 2011. In addition to being the founder of the Worcester Area Association All-Star program, he was a tireless supporter of collegiate athletics in the Worcester area and had a key role in the lives of thousands of student-athletes.