SAN DIEGO – Taking a cue from its quarterback and its cornerback, No. 15 Oregon ran over and past No. 13 Oklahoma State in the second half, winning Tuesday’s Holiday Bowl 42-31 to finish the season with 10 wins for only the fourth time in school history.
The Ducks (10-3) outscored Oklahoma State (9-4) 35-14 in the second half thanks to a resurgent offense that, once again, revolved around the running game. Oregon piled up 565 yards of total offense, including 307 on the ground with five touchdowns. All helped the Duck senior class forget the last-minute loss to Oklahoma in the same game in 2005.
“It erases every kind of bad memory I’ve had in the Holiday Bowl my freshman year against Oklahoma,” four-year starter center Max Unger said.
“It’s a very simple explanation for what happened tonight,” Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy said. “Oregon was much more physical in the second half than we were.”
For as many turning points the game offered, though, probably none was bigger for Oregon’s psyche than cornerback Walter Thurmond’s 91-yard kickoff return to the Cowboys’ three-yard line to open the second half. The drive ended two plays later with one of Jeremiah Masoli’s three rushing touchdowns, and the Ducks found the rhythm on offense that had been so dominant in its last two regular-season wins.
“I was trying to make a big play happen,” said Thurmond, who also intercepted a pass. “We were always one block away.”
Except for a 76-yard touchdown run by Jeremiah Johnson in the first quarter, the offensive shootout expected at the game looked more like just Oklahoma State’s show during the first half, when wide receiver Dez Bryant caught nine passes for 110 yards and a 33-yard touchdown where he spun out of Thurmond’s ankle tackle to sprint in untouched to put the Cowboys up 10-0 with four minutes left in the first quarter.
Bryant finished with 167 receiving yards and 13 catches, both Holiday Bowl records, and was the main element to OSU’s torrid start, which gained nine first downs in its first 19 plays.
An injury to Bryant’s leg on a tackle by Jairus Byrd with five minutes left in the first half shut down the momentum to the Cowboys’ offense, limiting his impact in the second half to much as a decoy receiver.
A shoulder injury to OSU quarterback Zac Robinson further hobbled the OSU offense when it needed to convert the most, namely two drives in the 10 minutes of the fourth quarter. Trying to answer a 20-yard touchdown run by Masoli that put the Ducks ahead 35-31, the Cowboys sputtered into two three-and-outs, never leading again.
“I said we were only 10 points out of this thing despite whatever had happened and that we had already weathered the storm on defense,” Bellotti said of his halftime speech, “and we needed to create a storm on offense.”
The signature play of the second half, after Thurmond’s return, came when Masoli ran a keeper to the right side of the offense one the first play of Oregon’s drive with eight minutes left in the third quarter, down 17-14. Seeing a hole behind his blockers, Masoli took OSU safety Quinton Moore head on, running him over and kept going for a 40-yard touchdown.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” offensive coordinator and head coach in-waiting Chip Kelly said. “He’s a tough, tough kid. He’s 225 pounds, he’s a big back.”
Masoli’s 710 rushing yards this season broke the quarterback rushing record at Oregon, held by Reggie Ogburn since 1979. His three touchdowns tied the Holiday Bowl record for rushing touchdowns by a quarterback. Backfield teammates Jeremiah Johnson and LeGarrette Blount became only the second 1,000-yard tandem in school history by virtue of Blount’s 29-yard hurdle and stiff-arm filled touchdown run with 3:01 left in the game that sealed the win and gave him 1,002 yards on the season.
“We never panicked,” Blount said.
Johnson finished with 1,201 yards on the season, the sixth-best season in UO history, and the Holiday Bowl record for longest offensive play in the 31st annual game’s history.
For as much as Oregon roared back in the final two quarters, it took the final two stops by the Oregon defense to give any kind of breathing room. The Cowboys answered Oregon touchdowns with scores of their own twice in the last half, on touchdown runs by Robinson and running back Kendall Hunter. Its defense stuffed the Ducks on fourth-and-one a yard from the Oklahoma State end zone late in the fourth quarter, a decision Bellotti said “could have been disastrous.”
A stop and a touchdown later, and Oregon, the team that hit its lowest point during a rain-soaked loss to California on Nov. 2, had won four straight games.
Bellotti, asked whether the win was more special because it could possibly be his last as head coach at Oregon before he gives the job to Chip Kelly and becomes athletic director himself, played coy.
“That’s a great way for anybody to go out,” he said.