PULLMAN, Wash. — After Wesly Mallard drilled Cougar receiver Mike Bush in the corner of the end zone, popping the ball loose and ending the game, the Ducks stormed the field with helmets raised and voices loud.
After Mallard’s hit, the Cougar fans slowly filed out of Martin Stadium with heads aimed downward amid the constant sideways rain that never let up throughout the game.
And after Mallard’s hit secured Oregon’s 24-17 victory Saturday over Washington State, the thousands of visiting Ducks fans, who just a week prior had exited Autzen Stadium with similar dejection as these Cougar faithful, went delirious.
One green and yellow clad enthusiast was heard saying, “I have never seen a game quite like that!”
Ho-hum. Just another day of Oregon Ducks football.
Oh sure, this day was unlike any other. But aren’t they all?
Onterrio Smith has zero carries in the first quarter, but then finishes up with an Oregon school record 285 yards on 26 carries.
Maurice Morris penetrates the Washington State defense in the first quarter, picking up 76 yards on 11 carries. He winds up with a paltry 138 yards, but give him a break. He would have had a chance to reach the 200-mark, too, if it hadn’t been for that left hamstring he aggravates on a 27-yard run at the end of the third quarter.
So Smith had the first quarter off and Morris had the fourth quarter off.
In all, the two combine for 423 yards. Add Joey Harrington’s 23 yards rushing, and that’s a tally of 446 yards running the football that smashes the Oregon school record of 403 yards set against California in 1960.
“I had an easy job today: Just hand the ball off and watch them run,” Harrington said with a grin he must have been glad to be sporting again.
Then there was also the game itself. In typical Ducks fashion, Oregon took the 17-3 lead, then the 17-10 lead, then the 24-10 lead, then the 24-17 lead and then barely hung on for the 24-17 victory.
“We made it a little bit tougher on ourselves than we needed it to be,” Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti said.
But what would be the fun in not making every second count? And besides, Washington State was undefeated and stood 10th in the Bowl Championship Series rankings. So traveling up to the Hawaiian-like locale of Pullman, Wash., and ending up victorious makes a point.
“We made a statement today,” Harrington said. “We had a point to prove.”
But the statement almost never got the chance to go through.
Oregon, with its seven-point lead, punts the ball back to Washington State with 1:34 to play in the game.
The Cougars start at their 14-yard line and quarterback Jason Gesser promptly completes five out of seven passes to bring them all the way down to the Oregon eight-yard line with 13 seconds left.
“I was like, ‘Here we go, we’re going into overtime again,’” said Gesser, remembering Oregon’s 27-24 overtime victory in Pullman last season.
On first and goal, Gesser spikes the ball to the ground, stopping the clock.
On second and goal, Gesser lofts the ball in the corner of the end zone to 6-foot-6 Mike Bush, but 5-foot-8 Rashad Bauman leaps up and knocks it away.
“Yeah, that was kind of like last week with Teyo, but I wasn’t thinking about it, I just batted it down,” said Bauman, referring to the touchdown by Stanford’s 6-foot-7 receiver Teyo Johnson over the outstretched hands of Bauman in the end zone on Oct. 20.
On third and goal, seven seconds left in the game, Gesser steps back, throws it down the middle, but right at Oregon linebacker David Moretti, who watches as it zips into his hands, and onto the ground.
“I have no excuse for not catching that ball,” Moretti said. “I had that right in the bread basket. I could have made the game one play less.”
Instead, the incomplete pass brings up the final play of the game.
On fourth and goal, two seconds on the clock, the undefeated Cougars are down by seven and are eight yards away from extending the game into an extra session.
Gesser takes the snap and again looks for Bush in the corner. The ball reaches Bush’s hands, but Mallard’s sculpted 6-foot-2, 215-pound frame reaches Bush at the same time. The ball bounces off Bush’s hands and flutters to the turf to complete Oregon’s key win, a week after the Stanford loss.
“I’m not sure how he ended up on the receiver on that last play, but I’m glad he did,” Bellotti said of Mallard.
With the clock finally reading 0:00, the Ducks run over to the pack of Oregon fans in the end zone. Stephen Clayton, the energetic redshirt freshman who has been impressive on special teams all season, is waving to the crowd just as he was at the beginning of this wild afternoon when he was the first Duck out of the tunnel.
Soon, the Ducks would enter the boisterous atmosphere of their locker room. And soon, the Ducks would join together and sing a rousing rendition of the Oregon fight song that is customary after every win.
But you could hear in their loud, proud and a tad off-key singing voices at that time, just how much this win meant to them.
With the Bruins and Cougars losing Saturday, no team in the Pacific-10 Conference is undefeated. Five teams have only one loss.
And Oregon remained one of them.
This was not your average win for these Ducks. It was a win that reclaimed some of that important swagger that had been taken from them. It was a win that proved their belief that one loss does not end a season.
And it was one win that sent one loud message back across the rest of this unpredictable, yet so enjoyable, Pac-10 Conference.
Bauman summed up the importance of the win in two words: “We’re baaaaaack.”