A Christmas Eve serving of Bowl games is in the books, and here’s a quick recap of what you need to know from the pre-Christmas double header:
Boca Raton Bowl
It seems like there are about 45 new Bowl games this year. Picturesque Boca Raton in Florida is the site of another one, following on from yesterday’s much-talked-about Miami Beach Bowl, and it saw the Marshall Thundering Herd of Conference USA against the Huskies of Northern Illinois, out of the Mid-American Conference.
Going in, one of the players to watch was Marshall QB Rakeem Cato, who was being mentioned earlier in the year as a potential Heisman bolter, and it was all Cato, all night as the quarterback tied an NCAA mark for touchdowns, including three against the Huskies as he farewelled college football with an emphatic 52-32 win over NIU. The game extended Cato’s NCAA-record streak of throwing at least one touchdown per game, pushing it out to a whopping 46.
Cato was 25-37 for 281 yards and three touchdowns passing, and added two more rushing, as the Thundering Herd ran up 505 yards of total offense. The major beneficiary of Cato’s big night was another Marshall senior, receiver Tommy Shuler, who made a whopping 18 catches for an equally-whopping 185 yards, breaking the Conference USA record for career receptions, finishing with 322.
Marshall finish the season 13-1, just a 67-66 overtime loss to Western Kentucky standing between them and a likely appearance in a New Year’s Six Bowl Game, and Northern Illinois close out 2014 at 11-3, a down year after scaling recent heights with QB Jordan Lynch running their prolific offense.
Poinsettia Bowl
It wasn’t pretty, and at times it was downright excruciating, but Navy have won their third-straight Bowl game 17-16 over San Diego State in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium to avenge a 35-10 loss in the same Bowl to the same school four years ago. Navy are now 2-2 in Poinsettia Bowls contested.
It was a night where turnovers and missed opportunities were key. Indeed, the Aztecs had a chance to win, but their kicker, Donny Hageman, pushed a 34-yard attempt with twenty seconds left, after his opposite number on the Midshipmen sideline, Austin Grebe, kicked a go-ahead field goal from 24 yards away.
There were seven turnovers in the game, four fumbles lost by Navy and three San Diego State turnovers, and it was the final turnover, a forced fumble by the Midshipman’s Chris Johnson that set up what was the eventual game-winning score.
San Diego State’s Donnel Pumphrey had 112 rushing yards on twenty-one carries, and now owns a school record for most rushing yards in a season, finishing with 1867 total, breaking a record that’s stood since 1995.
Navy’s QB Keenan Reynolds ran for three touchdowns, and furthers his own NCAA record for quarterback scores to 84, and completed three of seven attempted passes for a paltry 17 yards. That’s the norm for Navy, who rely on a triple option running attack to get their yardage, and get yardage they did, managing 254 on the ground.
The Middies won their fourth straight game, though it was definitely one that won’t be labelled any sort of classic. Reynolds admitted it wasn’t pretty, and that’s putting it nicely. His defense came up big when it counted, and Navy finish the season 8-5. San Diego also record a winning season in 2014, finishing 7-6.
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