On a day when one BCS buster hopeful saw their dreams come to an end, another one held on to their hopes by a thread, and another not-so-new face moved into the picture.
After escaping by the hair of their chinny chin chins last week at Tulane, East Carolina thought they could do the same this week at North Carolina State, but that wasn’t the case.
N.C. State was pretty bad against South Carolina and Clemson, and only beat I-AA William & Mary by 10 points, but they rose to the occasion today, responding every time the Pirates scored and capitalizing on ECU‘s failure to put them away.
Patrick Pinkney’s ability to avoid mistakes was a key part of ECU’s big start, but in overtime, Pinkney fumbled the ball away on a sack, ending the Pirates’ possession and putting N.C. State in position to win it with only a field goal. But, following a one-yard loss by QB (and hero) Russell Wilson on the first play, Greenville native Andre Brown broke off a 16-yard run, and on the next play, broke off another 10-yard run to get into the end zone and end it.
The Pirates were unable to seal the deal in a back-and-forth thriller against the Wolfpack, but Utah was able to at Air Force (though the Falcons did beat the spread), moving to 4-0 with a 30-23 win.
Air Force led 16-9 at halftime, but the Utes rallied to take a 23-16 lead in the fourth quarter, and after the Falcons tied it at 23 with five minutes to go, Utah drove 80 yards in 11 plays, culminating in Darrell Mack’s nine-yard touchdown run with 58 seconds left to provide the winning margin.
It’s an extremely impressive win for the Utes, since Air Force was also 3-0, and hadn’t lost at home since Nov. 18 of 2006 - a 17-14 loss to Utah. Not only that, but the Utes won by slowing down Air Force’s potent rushing attack, holding a team who averaged 358 rushing yards in the first three games to only 51 net yards on the ground, and in the meantime, racking up plenty of yards on the ground, with Matt Asiata (116 yards) and Mack (101 yards, 3 TD) both going over the century mark.
After breaking into the top 20 last week, Utah should go up, thanks in part to ECU’s loss, and also thanks to Boise State jumping back into the BCS buster picture with a 37-32 upset win at #12 Oregon.
Oregon already had injury issues at quarterback, and another one went down today, as Jeremiah Masoli, who started in place of the injured Justin Roper, suffered a head injury in the first quarter and didn’t return. With running threat Chris Harper coming into the game, the Ducks’ offense was more run-oriented than it would’ve been already, and while it worked for a little while, the lack of a passing attack saw drive after drive sputter after Oregon took a 6-0 lead in the first quarter.
While Oregon’s pass offense wasn’t working for the first three quarters, Boise’s stepped up with Oregon doing a good job of shutting down Ian Johnson and the ground game, as red shirt freshman Kellen Moore didn’t look to have too many butterflies in his first road start, going 24 of 36 for 386 yards, three scores, and an interception.
In the end, the Broncos had to hold on, because true freshman Darron Thomas did all he could and then some to try to rally the Ducks in the fourth quarter after coming in for Chris Harper following his second interception, which led to Boise St.’s last score, which made it 37-13 in the third.
The Ducks hadn’t done much through the air up until Thomas’ insertion into the game, but forced to throw, Thomas showed that there was good reason to lift his redshirt by leading the Ducks to three fourth-quarter touchdown drives, all ending with him throwing touchdown passes. The last one made it 37-32 with 2:07 left, setting up the Ducks to be able to drive for a seemingly improbable winning score, but the onside kick was unsuccessful, and Boise ran the clock out.
The silver lining for Oregon is that, if Masoli is unable to go in next week’s game at Washington State, Mike Bellotti may have a starter for the time being in Thomas, who finished 13 of 25 for 210 yards, three touchdowns, and an interception.
As for the Broncos, they’ll jump from the cusp of the top 25 and into the rankings next week, and with a pretty favorable schedule the rest of the way, could find themselves in a now familiar position of being in the mix for a BCS berth.
