Miscue Lets Boose Cut Loose

Notebook

It seemed to be a perfect time for the beleaguered visitors to run out the clock and regroup at halftime, assuming, all things considered, things couldn’t get much worse.

They did, but misfortune didn’t wait for intermission.

The Oregon Ducks, struggling mightily toward the end of the first half, committed one last error that effectively ended the Pacific-10 football opener by halftime.

Facing a third-and-10 situation from the Oregon 48 as time ran out, Ducks quarterback Ryan Perry-Smith faded back to pass. He was flushed from the pocket by defensive end Dorian Boose, who caught him from behind and knocked the ball loose.

Boose and Perry-Smith then scrambled for the ball with the 280- pound Boose shoving the 197-pound Perry-Smith out of the way. Boose then picked up the ball at the 15 and ran into the end zone.

When the stunned crowd of 30,124 looked up, the clock was on 00:00 and the scoreboard read 31-14.

“I was questioning where it was a fumble,” Boose said. “I looked up and saw it loose and then I saw the quarterback go after it and I knew, so I knocked him down and picked up the ball.”

It was the second touchdown of the year for the junior from Tacoma and came when Ryan-Smith was trying to make a big play. The Cougars had just gone 56 yards in five plays to take a 24-14 lead 41 seconds before halftime.

“It’s not the place to (gamble),” Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said. “Obviously you’re in a ‘Big Ben’ situation or ‘Hail Mary,’ and if you get a chance to get up and set your feet and throw the ball, you do it. If you don’t, you just get out of Dodge.

“Ryan was trying to make a play and discretion would probably be the better part of that one.”

Perry-Smith agreed.

“I thought about trying to throw it away and then I was trying to tuck it away right as I got hit,” he said.

That definitely took the spirit out of the Ducks, who fell behind 52-14 in the third quarter before rallying against a Cougars team that lost focus.

Big play warmup

So how did the Ducks get into such a desperate situation?

They finally got a break after being dominated for much of the first half when Perry-Smith connected with Damon Griffin for a 45-yard scoring play to cut the Cougars’ lead to 17-14 with 2:25 left in the second quarter.

While Perry-Smith was rolling left, WSU defensive back Derek Henderson slipped at the 25 and Griffin was wide open at the 15 waiting for the throw. No one touched him as he raced into the end zone. However, in the excitement after the score, the Ducks were penalized for delay of game.

With the Ducks kicking off from their own 20, Dee Moronkola returned the ball to the WSU 44. That’s when Ryan Leaf engineered a five-play scoring drive, capped by his 1-yard sneak.

“That was not very smart,” Bellotti said of the penalty. “Supposedly one of their guys hit our guy in the end zone. But I couldn’t see that, that’s what I was told from the (press) box.

“We talked all along, when you go on the road, you have to play with a great deal of poise and we didn’t have that a couple of times tonight.”

Offensive defense

The longest play of the game wasn’t a nifty run or a pretty pass but another of those rumbling, bumbling, stumbling defensive lineman sprints.

As long as the Cougars were putting a whippin’ on the Ducks, it wasn’t surprising to see.

The Cougs had just marched 80 yards in nine plays to open the second half with Leaf hitting Chad Carpenter with an 11-yard scoring pass at the 11:05 mark to lead 38-14.

Oregon responded, driving to the the Coug 11 and facing a third-and- 5. Perry-Smith tried to dump a short pass to his left but junior defensive end Shane Doyle jumped up and deflected the ball right into defensive tackle Gary Holmes’ hands.

Holmes took off, clipping off 55 yards before being pushed out of bounds on the Oregon 30. On the next play Leaf found Bryant Thomas all alone in the back of the end zone.

“I saw it and grabbed it and ran as far as I could,” said Holmes, a 6- foot-7, 312-pound sophomore out of Lacey, Wash. “I wanted to score. Too bad I didn’t. I have to give Doyle all of the credit. He doesn’t tip it, that play doesn’t happen.

“When I caught the ball, I thought, ‘I never practiced this before, what do I do?’

” Doyle, a junior out of Shadle Park, knew what to do.

“I was trying to get my pass rush on … the tackle cut me,” he said. “I got up fast and saw the quarterback looking out that way. I felt the back run by me. I should have tried to intercept it, but when I was cut it was kind of instinct … I stuck my hand out and kind of hit it up. Luckily, Gary was kind of at the right place place at the right time. He caught it and ran very very far.”

Duck walk

After the disastrous first half, Bellotti had a few choice words during intermission.

“I challenged the team at halftime,” he said. “I told them, first of all, if anyone quit on me, I was going to make them walk home from Pullman.

“I don’t know if that was the feat that got ‘em going, but I saw kids support each other… .”

Injury report

Injuries are part of the game but it doesn’t seem like it when a team is just trying to run out the clock. WSU backup tight end John Kincaid fractured an ankle with 2:45 to play as the Cougars were trying to run out the clock.

The most serious injury was a torn ACL for defensive lineman Delmar Morais, who starts in front of Holmes.