Update on College Football!
Oregan State Beavers WON!!! 39/38 against Missouri Tigers in the Sun Bowl!
Show guts, know glory
By Bob Rodman
The Register-Guard
Published: Saturday, December 30, 2006
Oregan State Beavers WON!!! 39/38 against Missouri Tigers in the Sun Bowl!
Show guts, know glory
By Bob Rodman
The Register-Guard
Published: Saturday, December 30, 2006
EL PASO, Texas - "After further review, the two-point try is successful."
Not exactly Gettysburg Address stuff but to Oregon State and its Beaver Nation, it was a glorious utterance from Sun Bowl football game referee Penn Wagers.
The words sealed a remarkable finish to an even more remarkable season.
The Beavers made a fourth-quarter, jaw-dropping recovery - fueled by a most unexpected decision - to overtake Missouri 39-38 on a sunlit but cool Friday afternoon before an awestruck crowd of 48,732.
The hectic, gut-wrenching final minutes for Oregon State included: a massive defensive effort, a punt return, a 60-second, 54-yard drive for a touchdown and, trailing by a point, a choice to go for a win rather than a tie.
The Beavers won eight of their last nine games to finish the season with a 10-4 record, just the second 10-win performance in the 109-year-old history of the program.
But when stories of this day in the Texas desert are being retold for the umpteenth time, Oregon State's opting to take the big chance and go for the win with a two-point conversion will have become legendary.
It was OSU tailback Yvenson Bernard's idea, but it took coach Mike Riley's approval and it required an offensive line's will to win in order for the bet to pay off.
"The first guy to look me in the eye and say we should go for it was Yvenson Bernard," Riley said, "but we got a lot of encouragement from the offensive line."
Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, grinding mightily as the Tigers watched a 38-24 lead wither away in the final six minutes, unwittingly played a key role in Oregon State's decision to go for two points.
In the moments after senior quarterback Matt Moore's 14-yard touchdown pass to senior tight end Joe Newton yanked the Beavers to within a point at 38-37, and with placekicker Alexis Serna and the extra-point kick team on the field and 23 seconds left, Pinkel called timeout and asked for an official review of the Newton's catch.
"That time gave us a chance to explore the two-point idea a little bit," Riley said.
The decision made, Moore - ailing shoulder, ankle, ribs and all from a first-half hit - executed the play he called "Zing, I-right, ice blast" by handing the ball to Bernard.
"I don't know what all that means," said Moore, whose day in the Sun - 31-of-54 passing for 356 yards and a bowl-record four touchdowns, and one run for a touchdown - earned him the game's most valuable player award. "But I'm happy we did it."
The junior running back, pushed and pushed again by guards Adam Speer and Roy Schuening and center Kyle DeVan, crunched his way through the Missouri defense into the end zone.
The officials reviewed that play, too, but "I knew I was in," Bernard said. "I'm so glad coach Riley listened to me. Everybody wanted this win. There was no game next week, no game in the next two weeks."
Serna ran his streak of consecutive extra-point kicks to 106 but was denied a chance at No. 107. No problem.
"It was a great call," Serna said.
Riley, not known for his gambling ways, went for a dramatic two-point conversion in 1998. That attempt failed in the final seconds of a 35-34 loss at Washington.
This one did not.
"We didn't want to go into overtime," Bernard said. "We wanted to win it in regular time."
Missouri's offense had its way with the Beavers, ringing up 38 points and 561 yards - led by running back Tony Temple's 194 yards and two touchdowns rushing and quarterback Chase Daniel's 330 yards and two touchdowns passing.
Until the Tigers' final possession. Leading 38-31 with less than six minutes to play, Missouri got one first down, but then Temple was tackled by Coye Francies and Joey LaRocque for a 4-yard loss, Daniel threw incomplete, Daniel completed a pass for a 1-yard loss and Adam Crossett punted.
Sammie Stroughter did not return the punt for a touchdown, as he had done an OSU-record three times this season, but did take it 39 yards to the Beaver 46.
With 1:23 left, Moore - whose OSU-record string of passes without an interception ended at 182 - threw to Bernard for 12 yards, threw two incompletions and connected with Bernard for seven yards at the Missouri 35.
Faced with fourth-and-three, Moore passed to Stroughter for nine yards and the first down, then to Newton for 15 more to the Tiger 14.
The rest, as they say, is history. Newton caught his second touchdown pass of the game and the Bernard-led Beavers went for the two-point conversion.
In the frantic final 17 seconds, Missouri made its way to the Oregon State 40, but a lateral-laced, game-ending play was torched by a flag as hope and time ran out on the Tigers, who lost five of their last seven games to finish 8-5.
Or, as the referee said, "There was an illegal forward pass against the offense. The game is over."
Moore, one of seven senior starters for Oregon State and the target of disfavor when the Beavers were struggling at 2-3 in early October, said "it was a great way to go out."
It was, Riley said, "a pretty typical Beaver win. We gave ourselves a chance at the end and we made the most of that chance."
GO BEAVERS!!!
