Scott and Robby Ballentine led DePauw to victory in this year’s Monon Bell game, and the quarterback/wide receiver brother combination points back to another memorable performance in 2016.
Carson Johnson (2) rings the Monon Bell. Photo by Clay Maxfield
FROM HIS TEAM’S OWN 8-yard line with 7:37 left in the third quarter of the Monon Bell game, DePauw sophomore quarterback Scott Ballentine took the shotgun snap, faked a handoff, and fired a strike to his brother, Robby, who was running wide open on a skinny post from his position in the slot.
The older brother, a senior, dropped the ball and then buried his head in his hands. The play’s significance had little impact on the game—DePauw won the two liberal arts colleges’ 131st meeting anyway, 41-20. But for a brief moment on a day when Scott controlled the game against Wabash, the pressure and excitement following Robby’s miscue were palpable.
“He’s hard enough on himself. So, I just let him know he’s good, and he’s going to get the next one—which he did. … He makes 99 out of 100 catches,” Scott says about his brother.
After all, Robby sits in the top ten in Division III football across the country in receiving yards per game, receiving yards in the season, receptions per game, and receiving touchdowns. It’s his name that can be found on the list of semifinalists for the 2025 William V. Campbell Trophy—the only Division III player on the list—for exemplifying “the absolute best in the nation for his combined academic success, football performance, and exemplary leadership.”
DePauw has now taken four Monon Bell games in a row, inching the all-time series record closer to even. Wabash currently leads with 63 wins, 59 losses, and 9 ties. Though Wabash managed to keep Robby below his typical production his last Monon Bell, he still had seven catches for 80 yards and a touchdown.
“It was pretty clear early on that they wanted to try and take me away,” he says. “Last year in the game, my coaches did the stats, and they doubled me on 79 percent of the snaps. … The guys around me just kept making plays, and if they were going to stay in that then my teammates would continue to make plays.”
Scott finished his first Monon Bell completing 24 of 35 passes for 328 yards and four touchdowns.
“In my 16 years here, it’s the best first-year quarterback performance in a Monon Bell game that I’ve seen,” says DePauw head coach Brett Dietz, who’s now 4-1 as a head coach against Wabash. “Any time you play in a Monon Bell game, it’s a new experience. There are so many more people. We play in front of a thousand or two, and then you get 10,000. It’s like five times what we normally play in front of. … [Scott] stayed poised. He was able to stand in there and make throws.”
Scott Ballentine celebrates a touchdown. Photo by Clay Maxfield
The Ballentines hail from Andrean High School in Northwest Indiana, but this year was not the first time in history the game was characterized by a DePauw quarterback and wide receiver brother duo. Matt and Andy Hunt, who played for Heritage Christian School in Indianapolis before joining the Tigers, also overlapped during their respective years playing from 2013 through 2018.
Matt, now 31 years old, back in Indianapolis and working in finance for Kite Realty Group, recalls how exhausting offseason workouts with his “best receiver” were when he and his brother would go to their old high school to run routes.
Matt, who goes to the Monon Bell game every year, attended his first one as a Wabash recruit before deciding to go to DePauw. The four-year starter lost his first three Monon Bell games. The brothers’ “Monon Memory” came in 2016 during Matt’s senior and Andy’s sophomore season.
Playing at Wabash that year, Matt remembers Andy having words with him about not getting him the ball enough. With 2:02 left on the clock and down 34-30, DePauw took over the ball at its own 20-yard line. The older Hunt still remembers the whole six-play drive.
“First play, took a sack. Then it was completion, completion, run play, completion, and then the last play was a touchdown,” he says.
The game-winner was a 13-yard corner route to his younger brother, and then they both led a sprinting charge of teammates toward their fans.
“November 12,” Matt recalls, “like the third best day of my life.”
Frankie Ricciardi is brought down by two Wabash defenders. Photo by Clay Maxfield
The touchdown and win weren’t the end of it. There was a police escort back to Greencastle and champagne out of the 300-pound, gold and red bell trophy awarded to the year’s victors.
Though the win over Wabash clinched a second-place finish for DePauw in the North Coast Athletic Conference, DePauw received an at-large bid for the Division III playoffs and will play at noon CST at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, on Saturday, November 29. Wabash will play Ohio Northern in the ForeverLawn Bowl this Saturday, November 22, in Canton, Ohio, at 1 p.m.
