Nice come from behind victory for Oregon against a determined Oklahoma State team in a typical high-scoring Holiday Bowl affair.
The Ducks found themselves trailing after the first quarter 17-7 (that was the halftime score as well) due to the combination of standout OSU receiver Dez Bryant and a Cowboy defense eager to make a name for itself against a standout offensive team from another conference. Bryant was everything that he was touted as, and he wound up catching a bowl record 13 passes (for 167 yards and the games first touchdown), while the defense showed enough skill to disrupt the timing of Oregon's offensive line and stall most of their first half drives.
Oregon's first touchdown came on another long spectacular Jeremiah Johnson run, 76 yards (another bowl record) down the Duck sideline, more props must be given to receiver Jaison Williams for his downfield blocking, he took out two different defenders that sprung Johnson for the last leg of the touchdown run. Quarterback Jeremiah Masoli also was running interference on the play and slowed the progress of one Cowboy just enough, though he was rewarded for that effort by being knocked on his backside.
Masoli took the game into his own hands in the third quarter (let's face it, it had a lot to do with his feet as well) and ran for three touchdowns. The first was set up by a spectacular half opening kick-off return from Walter Thurmond III that set the Ducks up inside the OSU five yard line.
The second touchdown is the one that most people will probably recall from this game, a 41 yard dash that went through and over the Cowboy defense, his blasting of hapless safety Quinton Moore was the stuff of YouTube videos, and that score gave the Ducks their first lead of the game at 21-17.
Masoli's third touchdown run (toward the end of the quarter, and a reply to an Oklahoma State touchdown that allowed the Cowboys to reclaim the lead) was a "relatively" easy 17 yard attempt that fooled the defense; I'm not sure that many Cowboys knew who had the ball until Masoli was almost in the end zone.
Oklahoma State replied on their next drive with another touchdown to go on top again, however, by this point, Bryant was lost for further game use resulting from an earlier leg injury, and quarterback Zac Robinson was continually getting blasted by an Oregon defense that had started to reassert itself physically since the beginning of the second quarter. That combination was a factor in the ineffectiveness in their offensive output for the rest of the game.
Duck receiver Williams made an excellent catch to give the Ducks the lead back for good, and tailback LaGarrette Blount capped the game off with an astounding 29 yard run, one in which he leap-frogged a diving Moore and shrugged off a couple of more Cowboy defenders in the last part of the run. A note must be paid to the Cowboy defense, on the previous Oregon possession, the Ducks had a first and goal inside the five, and were turned back repeatedly until the Ducks turned it over on downs; the Cowboys certainly still had the will to win the game, but the injuries for them on the offensive side limited their capacity to go out and do it.
Too tired to speculate as if this was Mike Belotti's last game as Oregon head coach (for the record, I say one more year) but it was certainly a nice cap to a good football year...........and it's going to be weird next year to see that people like Nick Reed, Max Unger and Patrick Chung won't be playing, and how hard it will be to replace them. Then I remember, I can still recall worrying about how the Ducks were ever going to get a running back as good as Latin Berry again. Based on the evidence from the last (near)twenty years, I'd speculate that I shouldn't worry about things like that ever again. Let's go Ducks!!!!
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