He had as many interceptions in the last three weeks as he did in his first three seasons at James Madison.

“It’s definitely pretty special,” Dukes senior safety Adam Smith said.

Smith’s interception of Towson quarterback Tom Flacco during JMU’s 27-10 win this past Saturday marked the third straight game Smith tallied a pick. The turnover stopped the Tigers past midfield and ended their shot of taking an initial lead in the opening quarter.

“It was a huge play,” Smith said. “Honestly, he overthrew it and you’ve got to make the catches and the easy ones, too, but he overthrew it and gave us the opportunity to flip the field around.”

Interceptions for Smith against William & Mary and Villanova came in the fourth quarter of those games to seal victories over the Tribe and Wildcats. Smith, who had his first interception of the season in Week 3 against Morgan State, now has a career-high four for this campaign to go along with 42 tackles and three pass breakups through nine games.

“I think the defense as a whole is kind of catching on,” Smith said about the uptick in interceptions, “and we’re actually learning it and getting pretty comfortable with it. So I think the [defensive line] goes out there, plays lights out as you see every week and they make a lot of opportunities for the back end.”

It took a hard-to-believe comeback, but Stony Brook snapped a two-game losing streak and renewed its playoff hopes at the same time on Saturday.

The Seawolves rallied from a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit by scoring 16 points in the final five minutes to knock off previously No. 5 Villanova.

“Things fell into place,” Stony Brook coach Chuck Priore said earlier this week during the Colonial Athletic Association coaches teleconference. “You can’t choreograph that.”

Priore isn’t exaggerating either.

SBU had a chance to even the score via two-point conversion following quarterback Tyquell Fields’ 1-yard touchdown run with 1:32 to go, but Fields’ pass on the attempt was dropped leaving Villanova a chance to secure a victory once it corralled a failed-onside kick try from the Seawolves.

The Wildcats called a pair of pass plays to begin the possession and couldn’t run out the clock, giving Fields and company one more crack. He threw a 19-yard pass and a 40-yard pass to get Stony Brook in field-goal range and Nick Courtney booted a 22-yarder to win as time expired.

“You fight until the end of the game,” Priore said. “You fight four quarters and I hear coaches everywhere say it’s college football, it’s pro football, it’s PAL football and you play to the end and hopefully something good can happen.”

Entering this past weekend, Stony Brook had lost back-to-back games to James Madison and New Hampshire. With the win, SBU improved to 5-3 overall with four regular-season contests remaining. The Seawolves have made the playoffs in each of the past two seasons.

Richmond return man Aaron Dykes became just the second player in all of FCS to return two kickoffs for touchdowns in the same game this season when he did it in the Spiders’ win over Delaware on Saturday.

Dykes had a 100-yard kickoff-return touchdown in the first quarter and an 88-yard kickoff-return score in the second quarter.

“He played four games for us last year with the new redshirt rule as a true freshman and was returning kicks,” Richmond coach Russ Huesman said. “He didn’t pop one for a score, but had some big-time returns.

“So we knew this year he could be good. We just had to do an adequate job of blocking for him and we hadn’t been doing that. But got some blocks, stayed on some blocks and he’s a good enough player that he can even break a tackle or make someone miss if he needs to. The second one, it was well blocked and he just hit the lane and took off.”

Dykes was named STATS FCS National Special Teams Player of the Week and CAA Special Teams Player of the Week for his performance.

The only other player in the country to return two kicks for touchdowns in the same game prior to Saturday was Maine’s Earnest Edwards, who did it against Colgate in September.

Towson coach Rob Ambrose and Delaware offensive coordinator Jared Ambrose, brothers, will square off when the Tigers host the Blue Hens on Saturday at 2 p.m.

Jared was previously part of Rob’s staff at Towson from 2009 through last year before leaving for Delaware in the offseason.

“There’s knowledge on both staffs of both staffs philosophically,” Rob said. “But in the end it’s about the kids and there’s a whole bunch of coaches in two different states on two good football teams that are going to do their darndest to put their kids in position to win a game on Saturday.”