Half of the New Year’s Six Bowls are in the books, and what drama we saw! Here’s a quick recap of what you need to know the day’s action:
Peach Bowl
Some people – yours truly included – believe Texas Christian were unfairly left out of a spot in the top four, and a semi-final appearance, and anyone who doubted that the Horned Frogs were good enough to be in that final four were silenced by their 42-3 belting of Ole Miss in Atlanta.
Make no mistake, this was a statement win, and should Ohio State, the team who took the fourth and final spot after their commanding Big Ten Championship performance, that TCU had occupied until a week before, fail badly tomorrow against Alabama, let the debate begin about whether TCU deserved a shot at a National Championship berth.
There’s no debate that TCU were white hot. They dismantled the Rebels like they were a lowly team, not ranked ninth in the nation. SEC records tumbled, the 39-point loss tying the most lopsided Bowl loss in the conference’s history. The Horned Frog defense was as good as advertised, forcing four turnovers, all by Ole Miss QB Bo Wallace – yes, “Bad Bo” was on full display in this one. He was sacked five times, and one of his turnovers was an interception picked off in the end zone.
Despite three interceptions thrown by TCU’s own signal-caller, Trevone Boykin (who also completed touchdown passes of 12, 35 and 27 yards), the Ole Miss offense could only manage one field goal, their only points of the game. Even receiver Kolby Listenbee got in on the action, throwing his own touchdown pass of 31 yards to Aaron Green (who had a team-high 67 yards rushing) to open the scoring.
Imagine if Boykin hadn’t thrown those picks? Such was TCU’s domination, the score could’ve been up towards 70. 42-3 was bad enough for Ole Miss. They only punted four times all day, whilst it seemed that the Ole Miss punter was his team’s most-used player. That’s never a good sign for a team, and the Rebels will want to forget this one ever happened.
Fiesta Bowl
Boise State have been underdogs in the Fiesta Bowl before. It didn’t worry them back in 2007 against Oklahoma, it didn’t worry them in 2010 against Texas Christian and it certainly didn’t worry them in 2014 against the Arizona Wildcats.
Once more, the Broncos, the darlings of college football out of the Mountain West Conference, played the role of spoiler, the outsider invited in to play in a New Year’s Six Bowl as the highest-ranked team from outside a Power 5 conference.
It’s happened before, and it happened again. The Broncos punched above their weight, outlasting a plucky Arizona team 38-30 to capture their third Fiesta Bowl title in eight very successful years for a program that is now firmly entrenched in the upper echelons of college football.
There was no overtime heroics like against Oklahoma, and it wasn’t – for the most part, anyway – a defensive struggle like the victory over Texas Christian, but Boise State won just the same, lighting up an Arizona defense early and often, racing to a 21-7 lead at quarter time, helped along by a perfectly-executed Statue of Liberty play, just like what won them the game against Oklahoma. Boise had a 31-7 half time advantage, before letting their defense do their thing in the second half.
Offensively, the Broncos didn’t reach the end zone after half time. Their lone second-half touchdown was a pick-6 of Arizona QB Anu Solomon in the fourth quarter, but it hardly mattered, not after Boise State had torched the Wildcats in the first.
Star running back Jay Ajayi ran in a 56-yard touchdown on his first touch as part of 134 total rushing yards and emerging receiver Thomas Sperbeck caught twelve balls for 199 yards, and was virtually unstoppable and indefensible all night. Quarterback Grant Hedrick was almost perfect in the first half, missing on only one pass – an interception – en route to 309 passing yards and three touchdown passes.
As good teams do, Arizona clawed their way back, and had their chances to make the game closer, but Solomon and his receivers continued to have communication issues. Yes, Solomon made some big plays, but he also left so many on the field. Bad throws leading to interceptions – two of them – bad routes and bad drops by receivers, and a curious lack of urgency late in the fourth, with the clock winding and no time-outs left…Arizona experienced them all, again and again.
Against a team as good as the Broncos, that sort of lack of execution is going to kill you, and it did. Arizona will rue their own mistakes throughout, and wonder what might’ve been had they been able to show up and stop those big Boise State plays in the first quarter, which, in many ways, was where the game was won and lost.
Orange Bowl
Wow, did the SEC take a hit today or what? Granted, the state of Mississippi took as big a hit, but the focus will be more on the vaunted conference having both teams blown out in big games today – first Ole Miss by a Big XII team in TCU and then Mississippi State by Georgia Tech of the ACC.
Like the Peach Bowl, the 49-34 Georgia Tech victory in the Orange Bowl – their first in 63 long years – wasn’t even close. Well, it was for the first half, with Georgia Tech taking a narrow 21-20 lead after Mississippi State somehow connected on a Hail Mary touchdown pass on the last play of the first thirty minutes. But it was a 21-point onslaught from Georgia Tech in the third period that really blew the game wide open. The Yellow Jackets had a 42-20 lead at the end of three quarters, and that was just about that.
Two Mississippi State touchdowns in the final quarter made the score a little more flattering for the Bulldogs, but the damage had been done. After Ole Miss earlier, another vaunted SEC defense, lauded throughout the nation, had been gashed.
Whereas the Rebels were belted through the air, the Bulldogs gave up 452 rushing yards to Georgia Tech – an Orange Bowl record, if you were wondering – including 171 yards and two scores to the electrifying Synjyn Days, whose 69-yard touchdown run to really ice the game in the third came with a barrelling run through and over State defenders.
Mississippi State outgained Georgia Tech in total yardage 605-577, and had an Orange Bowl-record 453 yards from quarterback Dak Prescott, but it wasn’t enough for the Bulldogs, whose defense was victimised again and again. A huge fall from grace for State, who sat atop the national rankings for 5 weeks midseason, then lost three of it’s final four games.
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