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Rice 31, Southern Miss 29
HATTIESBURG, Miss. (Oct. 4) – When Rice place kicker Clark Fangmeier uncharacteristically pushed his 31-yard field goal attempt wide left early in the fourth quarter of the Owls’ contest with Southern Miss Wednesday, no one on the visitors' sideline reacted in a way that would have indicated the slightest degree of perturbance. Sure, maybe a few long-suffering Owl fans in the stands instinctively reacted by registering an involuntary "uh-oh" in the pit of the stomach. But after all, the Owls were still nursing a 31-7 lead two minutes deep into the final quarter, with the Rice defense eagerly creating and gobbling up one after another turnover. Surely Rice head coach David Bailiff’s defensive unit could make a few more plays, and the conservative Rice offense could milk enough clock to enable the Flock to get out of Hattiesburg with a relatively easy win. But it almost wasn’t to be, for in the last 12 minutes of the game, Southern Miss rolled up 215 yards total offense en route to three extended touchdown drives, falling only a failed two-point conversion short of tying the game with just under two minutes left. Even then, after the Owls succcessfully covered a second consecutive onsides kick, the suddenly-dormant Rice offense could not run out the clock, instead punting to the USM 17 where the Eagles set up to try and use the last 1:50 of the game to get close enough to the Owl goal to win it with a walk-off field goal. Fittingly, however, the Rice defense, as patchworked and banged-up as it was, rose to the occasion as Aubrey White blitzed in to nail USM quarterback Stephen Reaves as he set up to throw, whereupon Jonathan Cary smothered the fumble and ended USM’s comeback chances. A win’s a win, however, especially at a tough road venue such as USM. "When you can win at ‘The Rock,’ I don’t care what the score is," a frazzled but exhilarated Rice head coach David Bailiff said afterwards. "This is a special place, and their winning record here bears that out. It’s special to come in here and leave with a win." "To come into an environment like this, it's a tough place to play," Rice quarterback Chase Clement said in summation. "It was our first conference win and against an opponent that's picked to win the conference, it's definitely a confidence booster for us." Going into 4th quarter, looked like a laugher
Before USM roared to those 22 fourth-quarter points, this one had all the earmarks of the kind of blow-out laugher that the Owls recorded last season at West Point. Chase was crisp in his passing, deft in his scrambling, and sound in his decision-making (despite only showing a misleading 69 yards of passing offense on the stat sheet). True Freshman Justin Hill ran well as an eleventh-hour substitute for injured running back C J Ugokwe and less-than-100 per cent Marcus Knox. The fact that Rice garnered only 236 yards total offense for the game is deceiving in that, first, due to the turnovers, the Rice field position was such that they didn’t have all that far to go to score, and second, with the 31-7 lead, the Rice offensive brain trust pretty much let the air out of the tires for the last 20 minutes of the game. It’s instructive to review each of those turnover-induced scoring drives fashioned by the Owls against USM. Looking at them one-by-one...
"They (the interceptions) were just coming to us," Will said after the game. "We had a great week of practice. We kind of knew where to get into the right spots and make that happen." Then on the third and goal from the 7, Chase threaded the needle to Jarett Dillard, who’d stepped between two defenders to score easily.
That set up another chip-shot drive for the Owls, and this time James Casey did the honors, rushing for three straight times and scoring from two yards out on third down. That gave the Owls their 21-7 halftime lead. Hill impressive in 54-yard TD run
Between Shoppa’s interception and return and Braines’ hit-and-recovery, the Owls scored their only points of the night not set up by a turnover when, with the score tied 7-7, freshman running back Justin Hill caught a thin seam up the middle but nobody home on the defense once he broke into the secondary. As a result, the exciting frosh runner scored easily from 54 yards out, putting the Owls up once again, 14-7.
That set up the Owls, this time, at the USM 24, where Marcus Knox promptly ripped off an 18-yard run to give the Owls first and goal. Then on second down Chase hit JD on a quick out and just like that, the Owls had built what appeared, even then, to be an insurmountable 28-7 lead.
This time, the Owls had to settle for the field goal, although Chase hit Jarett Dillard for what appeared to be a touchdown on second and three from the 19. It was one of those ‘06 model TD receptions, where Jarett skirts the sideline halfway deep in the end zone. The pitch and catch was perfect, but the ref ruled JD out of bounds when the reception was secured. So Clark Fangmeier came in and booted a 36-yard field goal, no problem. Who would’ve thunk it, at the time, that that field goal was going to provide the margin of victory for the Owls in this bizarre game. Actually, when another hail-mary passing attempt was made by USM’s Stephen Reaves on the Eagles’ next possession, Andrew Sendejo was there once again to make the pickoff – and the game, suddenly, was exhibiting all the signs of a laugher. "That's what we've been aiming for all year: trying to get takeaways," Andrew said, post-game. "The coaches had us lined up just right to defend the Southern Miss passing game." That, however, is when Clark Fangmeier missed his 31-yard field goal attempt, kicking across the grain. Injuries took toll on depleted Owl defensive corps
And that, however, is when the Golden Eagle offense took off like a house afire. Helping them along in that endeavor, however, was the fact that Rice had to employ a patchwork defensive alignment that was missing more than half of the starting defensive unit. "That’s what we had to do," Coach Bailiff said, post-game, because when we lost Brian Raines; we lost Sendejo; we lost Anderson; and when you show up minus Dietrich Davis and others, we just were playing some guys who we were having to coach on the sideline drawing up plays in the dirt. And I was proud of how they responded." But Rice DE Will Shoppa had another angle on the Owls’ near-swoon in the fourth quarter. "It's probably because that's our first time to be up this season," Will said. "We came out and didn't know how to react to that but once we saw we had to keep working for it, we all buckled down and did what we had to do." In fact, when USM finally scored once more with 10:30 in the game, developments appear to breathe new life into the Eagles’ dispositions. USM’s Marcus Raines’ two-yard rush up the middle was set up by a 51-yard broken-field run by the Eagles’ Tory Harrison that featured several missed tackles. But the thing that really appeared to get the Mississippians fired up was the two-point conversation after the touchdown. On that play, USM’s Damion Fletcher took the handoff and ran wide, heading for the pylon. The Owls appeared to have the play defended, but, a la Todd Dodge against Rice in ‘91, the agile USM running back stretched the ball toward the pylon as he was flung out of bounds. And the head linesman bought it. Only, the guy simply didn’t score on the two-point conversion. The head linesman was standing just even with the goal line and five feet off the sideline. This reporter was standing three yards deep in the end zone and five feet off the sideline. The angle of inclination for the head linesman was oblique and distorted; for this pair of eyes it was just right. Everybody up close to the play would agree that Fletcher went out of bounds as he neared the goal. This writer coincidentally had the best position, either on the field or in the stands, to judge whether any part of the ball was stretched out over the pylon before any part of Fletcher’s corpus touched down out of bounds. And it didn’t. Period. But that made it 31-15, and as the USM players hustled off the field, one could hear the chatter about "two scores, two scores" – an improbable three touchdowns plus all three two point conversions would, indeed, be enough to tie the game. Had the score rightly been kept at 31-13, there’d have been non of that ‘two scores’ business. 'Upon further review,' Owls came up short on third down
Still, things were looking good when the Owls moved the ball on their next possession. Chase Clement had a key scramble on third and eleven from the Rice 45. The officials signaled ‘first down’ but the press-box crew overruled the men on the field and said, instead, it was fourth and inches. The Rice offensive brain trust decided to punt away, and after the ball was fair-caught by USM’s Chris Johnson at his own five-yard line (duh...) that strategy appeared to have been the right move. But the now tired and depleted Rice defense couldn’t keep USM from steadily moving the ball. The Eagles cut the score to 31-21, then 31-23 a couple of minutes later when Damion Fletcher roared up the middle to score from 15 yards out; whereupon Reaves connected with Tory Harrison for a another two-point conversion. Four and a half minutes was left on the scoreboard clock at that time, and everybody in the stadium knew an onsides kick was coming. Rice coaches sent in the ‘hands’ team, and it appeared as if Taylor Wardlow had successfully snared the ball, only to have it bounce from his grasp as he was slammed to the turf. Thought the ground cannot cause a fumble, but apparently that’s not the rule in Kudzu-Land, because the gendarmes awarded possession to USM, and the Eagle sideline, plus the local fans who’d stayed around that long, were all in a tizzy. USM quickly moved as far as the Rice six yard line, but there the Owl defense stiffened their backs. Three different passing attempts were tried by the Eagles at that point. A sideline screen on first down went for a loss of two as Ja’Corey Shepherd had the play sniffed out. On second down, Reaves tried the fade, but the Owls defended it. On third down, he tried the sideline, but the Owls knocked it away. So it was fourth down and eight, but under a heavy rush Reaves was able to connect with Shawn Nelson crossing the middle, just over the goal line, and suddenly it was 31-29. That’s when the Owls’ Carl Taylor said ‘enough of this’ when he intercepted a Reaves fastball down the middle on the conversion attempt. As mentioned, however, still the Eagles got the ball back for one last shot with a minute and a half remaining after the Owls failed to gain a first down after a successful recovery of onsides kick number two. In fact, not only did the Flock fail to gain a first down, they march 20 yards in the wrong direction on three successive plays. Luke Juist got off a good punt to the USM 16, where Chris Johnson returned it 11 yards to the 27. Two or three good completions, and the Eagles would be in field goal range with a chance to win the damn game. But the Rice defense rose to the occasion. After an incompletion, on second down, Owl defender Aubrey White blitzed in and hit Reaves on the blind side, separating him from the ball. The pigskin bounded crazily on the carpet, but Rice DL Jonathan Cary was cat-quick to get to the pill, pick it up, and head goalward. In fact, he made it to the USM nine yard line before he was brought down. "They had to throw the ball," Aubrey White said afterwards. "I knew that I was going to get a tackle coming out on me, so I knew I was going to be able to work around him. I saw his arm go back, went for the hit, and jarred it loose." "I guess they just had more drive than we did," USM defensive end Robert Henderson said. "They wanted the ball more. Our defense acted like we didn't want the ball." Still, there was even more excitement at the end, as the USM clock-keeper just wouldn’t restart the scoreboard clock after Chase took a knee on a play that should’ve ended the game. In fact, the guy never did wind the clock down to zero, but after two kneel-downs by Chase, the refs signaled the game over, as three red-necked, Smokey-Bear-hat-wearing Mississippi state troopers angrily and dryly eyed the besides-themselves Rice coaches and players on the sidelines as if to say, "You boys ain’t nevah gon’ make d’ county lahn." Apparently, theft of seven turnovers is a peniteniary offense in Hattiesburg, Mississippi – at least if it’s perpetrated by the visitors. --P.T.H.
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Will
Shoppa’s pick and return. With the game scoreless in the first quarter, USM
was driving the football and faced a third and seven at the Rice 37 yard line. Eagle
quarterback Stephen Reaves tried to go to running back Damion Fletcher on the slant for
the first down, but DE Will Shoppa was in position to make the pick against heavy traffic.
As he turned downfield, an escort of blockers materialized-- which was both a boon and a
detriment. Will lumbered down the visitors’ sideline picking his way through his own
blockers, and it looked as if he might take it all the way, before being knocked out of
bounds by a USM wide receiver approaching him obliquely across the field. But the return
went for 58 yards and gave the Owls a first-and-goal at the USM 10.
