A lovely fall day for football turned into a nightmare for the visiting Cougars as the Ducks took advantage of three early Alex Brink turnovers to spark an amazing first half of play from Oregon, winding up at the break with an insurmountable 40 to 0 lead.
I know Brink would've loved to have performed better in his hometown debut (also his finale as well) and I do not begrudge him at all the motivating factor of not being offered a scholarship by the hometown college team. The big issue is that early on the Cougars moved the ball between the 20's fairly well, but two poor throws and a fumble by Brink, in their first four possessions, put the defense in a bad position. Oregon, having a very good offense, made the Cougars pay for those mistakes and things just snowballed out of control quickly for Washington State.
The first play for Oregon, after Brink's first interception, was a 42 yard touchdown run by Jeremiah Johnson, and the other big touchdown highlight was Jaison Williams turning a short screen pass into a 52 yard run down the sideline in front of the Cougar bench. The bad news for the Ducks on this day were major injuries to receiver Cameron Colvin (broken ankle, gone for the year) and a sprained knee for Johnson (who looked to be in good spirits despite being on crutches for the second half; fingers crossed for good news from an upcoming MRI). (MORNING AFTER EDIT: From what I've read, the prognosis for Johnson isn't very good, apparently Belotti mentioned that JJ was probably done for the year at his post-game press conference, but I somehow missed that announcement with everything else that was going on).
About the only stats I remember are that Oregon had 390 yards of offense in the first half, the Cougars with only 130, and Alex Brink had 115 passing yards in the first half, and added 136 in the third quarter but only managed to get one touchdown. That being said, Brink did make some great throws and he had some receivers who could make a hard catch, but the Cougar drives would invariably bog down to the pressure from the Oregon defense. I'd read that the Cougars had only allowed nine sacks in the first six games of this year, but Oregon hurried and got to Brink whenever it had to.
It was another upsetting day in the college football world, a lot of Duck fans were buzzing because Kentucky (and ex-Duck coach Rich Brooks) was giving #1 L.S.U. a run for their ranking, IN WHICH L.S.U. EVENTUALLY LOST, and for the fact that the Oregon State Beavers knocked off the #2 California Golden Bears with a good ball-control offense that performed largely error-free when it most needed to this year, with that games recap right HERE; the funny thing about that game is that I had to give my brother a play-by-play description of the last two minutes as he was making his way back home from Santa Barbara to Burbank; the joy in his voice as I informed him that Kevin Riley ran to the middle of the field rather than the sideline as time was expiring was the best thing I've heard in a long while. He told me he was gonna wear a Duck shirt and a Beaver hat whilst going about his business in the Southland tomorrow, what an Oregonian! Good on ya bro, it was indeed a pleasure describing those crazy last plays of the game.
DUCK RECAP
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