PEMBROKE — The lasting impression made by the 2023 UNC Pembroke football team might just be its ability to rewrite the Braves program’s record books.

After a season in which school records fell seemingly every Saturday, five more marks were broken in the season finale against Concord. Behind the historic performances, the Braves routed the visiting Mountain Lions in a 68-21 victory.

“We want to break records; we want our offensive and defensive units and special teams to break records, and individuals to break records,” said Mark Hall, who completed his first season as the Braves head coach. “We work really hard to have those things happen, and it’s good to see, we really found our footing down the stretch here in terms of putting the ball in the end zone, and probably selfishly could’ve had more, but we’re not going to complain about 68.”

UNCP (7-3, 6-3 Mountain East Conference) set a school record with its 68 points scored, surpassing the team’s 66-point output against Elizabeth City State on Sept. 9, 2017.

“The emphasis this week during practice throughout the week was sending the seniors out with a win; nobody wants to lose their last game of football, so all the underclassmen, guys were just playing for them,” Braves quarterback Colin Johnson said. “Even pregame, we just talked about getting a win for them. I think it was just the culmination of all the hard work we’ve put in over the season, and through these last four games we’ve been playing pretty good.”

The Braves also set a team mark for a single season, completing the campaign with 40.4 points per game, the highest scoring average in program history.

Individually, Sincere Baines ran for five touchdowns, breaking the school’s single-game record; he rushed for 178 yards on 21 carries. He topped the previous record of four set by Travis Daniels in 2011.

“This is just a great feeling,” Baines said. “We went out there and we executed. The O-line blocked their tail off, the wide receivers blocked their tail off, and I just ran hard.”

“We felt great about him when we signed him back in February, and I’ve said this all season, we think he’s a superstar,” Hall said. “Sometimes as a freshman it just takes a little bit for us to get him in the mix, but once he got in there, you can see it when he’s out there, he’s probably the best player on the field.”

Defensively, Jamae Blank recorded two sacks, bringing his season total to 12.5 to break the one-year-old school sacks record of Tyreke King, who had 11.5. Ray Freeman set a single-game record for tackles for loss, earning 4.5 of them — and may have also provided the inspiration for Blank’s record-breaking day.

“One of the biggest motivating factors has been No. 41, Raydarius Freeman,” Blank said. “He was part of that group that came over here from Chowan; that boy means the world to me. If people really knew how much work he puts in, the work horse that he is, the atmosphere and attitude, the energy that he projects — it’s contagious, and it’s really been one of the motivating factors the whole season. … I did this for everybody else but me.”

Freeman, who had seven tackles to match a team high alongside Justin Foreman, left everything on the field in his final collegiate football game, completing his first season with the Braves after transferring from Chowan, following Hall to Pembroke.

“Football has treated me right, these coaches have treated me right, this team has treated me right,” Freeman said. “We wanted to send the seniors out right, and we did, and it also shows what the program can do and moving forward what the program is going to be about — about toughness, physicality, domination of the ball, how we’re going to run the ball and play great defense.”

“Ray embodies everything we want our program to be about; I wish I could coach Ray Freeman for the rest of my career,” Hall said. “I told his parents they have an amazing son during senior day. He gives us every ounce of everything he has, every single time. He’s our team leader, our vocal leader, and he makes plays that most people don’t, just off of sheer hustle.”

UNCP led Concord (1-10, 1-9 MEC) 17-7 at halftime; Baines scored his second touchdown of the day to give the Braves a 24-7 lead.

Blank’s record-breaking sack came on the next drive as he stripped the ball from the Mountain Lions’ Jack Mangel and recovered the fumble. It led to Baines’ third touchdown, which came moments later on a 2-yard run for a 31-7 lead with 11:17 left in the third.

“It was really just playing with a motor,” Blank said. “The coach, he was saying, just go get after it, setting up the right tackle. I had a good matchup and was getting off the whole game. … With the people behind me it was easy, because I was able to put myself aside, put the aches and pains, put the tiredness aside and just play for the people around me and the people that I love. Really, through that play, it was jab inside, came right back outside, and then it was there — it happens really fast.”

Concord scored on a 45-yard fumble recovery touchdown by Brodee Rice; the Braves quickly answered with a 10-yard Johnson run to make it 38-14. Baines tied the rushing touchdown record with the next score, a 21-yard run with 1:39 left in the third to make it 45-14.

T.J. Finney scored on a 5-yard run for Concord in the first minute of the fourth quarter to pull to a 45-21 deficit. UNCP faced a third-and-28 on its next drive, but Johnson ran 31 yards to the end zone with 10:31 to go, making it a 52-21 game.

Just 27 seconds later, the Braves’ Keshawn Pickett intercepted Mangel and returned it 15 yards for a touchdown and a 59-21 Braves advantage.

Baines’ record-setting touchdown came on an 8-yard run with 5:48 left which gave the Braves a 66-21 lead.

“Really, he just came in this season and just took over,” Johnson said of the Braves’ running back. “We gave him opportunities to make plays, and he just took advantage of almost every one of them. If he keeps playing like that, he could break even more records next year, for however long he’s here. I’m just proud of him, the maturity he has; there’s not a lot of freshmen that could come in and do something like that. He’s a superstar, so I’m really excited for his future.”

That touchdown also tied the school’s single-game scoring record. Concord lined up to punt moments later, and one attempt was botched for an apparent safety, but the play was negated by an offsides penalty; then the Mountain Lions did it again, the Braves got the two points, and more history had been made.

The Braves totaled 637 yards of offense, the second most in a game in school history. Johnson was 18-for-29 passing for 309 yards and a touchdown and rushed for 157 yards and two scores; Trey Dixon caught four passes for 73 yards and a touchdown and Malik Tobias had four catches for 39 yards.

While the day resulted in plenty of historic feats for the Braves, the team left some points on the board in the first half. An early red-zone trip resulted in a field goal, and drives later in the half resulted in a turnover on downs deep in Concord territory and an interception by the Mountain Lions’ Trennon Mitchell in the end zone after the ball deflected off a Braves receiver’s hands.

“We came in the locker room and told them really there was no adjustment, it was just we’ve got to play better,” Hall said. “We’ve got to execute better, we’ve got to play harder and we’ve got to have more energy, and I think the team responded and we did a good job of that in the second half.”

The early field goal — a 27-yarder by Ty Woods — gave UNCP a 3-0 lead. The Braves then scored on their next drive when Johnson found Trey Dixon for a 12-yard touchdown reception — the 18th of Dixon’s career, on his senior day — to take a 10-0 lead with 3:05 left in the opening quarter.

Baines’ first touchdown of the day came on a 6-yard run in the first minute of the second quarter for a 17-0 lead. Concord scored a 2-yard run by Kevon Young-Warren to cut the Braves’ lead to 17-7 with 10:19 left in the half; it was the first touchdown allowed by the Braves in 12 quarters, since the second quarter against Fairmont State on Oct. 14.

The Braves finished the season by winning their last four games, and six of the last seven; UNCP outscored the opposition 222-28 in its final four games, and the 222-point output in that stretch is easily the most in a four-game span in school history, besting a 185-point stretch in 2011.

“What we’ve accomplished right now is just building up to what we’re going to accomplish next season,” Baines said. “We started off sluggish, but you see how we finish.”