Utah State gridiron notches first road win
When crunch time came Saturday afternoon, the Utah State football team once again responded.
USU defeated the Troy State Trojans 19-16 in overtime courtesy of a Dane Kidman 34-yard field goal followed by a defensive stop which included USU defensive-end John Chick blocking a pass and sacking Trojan quarterback Hansell Bearden for an 8-yard loss.
In that overtime possession, Troy State had a golden chance to earn the win, but wide receiver Andrew Amerson bobbled and then dropped an apparent scoring pass in the end zone on the Trojans’ first offensive play.
USU’s past five games have been decided by a total 10 points, with the Aggies winning three.
With USU down 16-13 with three seconds left in regulation, Kidman also put in the game-extending field goal.
For the second straight game, the Aggie rushing attack came up huge. USU’s James Samuel led all rushers as he ran for a season-high 159 yards on 26 attempts.
Jose Fuentes completed 20 of 39 passes for 275 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions.
Tightend Chris Cooley hauled in a game-high seven passes for 134 yards.
The Aggies did all this to a Trojan defense who, coming into Saturday’s game, held opponents to an average of 105 yards on the ground and 161 through the air (No. 6 nationally in total defense).
“Nobody has moved the football on them like we did [Saturday],” said USU Head Coach Mick Dennehy afterwards in a radio interview. “Their defensive front is as good as anybody we’ve played against.”
Perhaps the more important catalyst for USU was the performance of its own defense.
The Aggies held the Trojans to 93 yards rushing and 99 yards passing, as well as 1 for 14 on third-down conversions.
“I don’t think our defense has been given as much credit as we deserve,” Chick said. “Throughout the year we have had some breakdowns here and there, but today we came out and everyone busted their a–.”
Down 16-13 after Troy State did its best to run down the game clock as far as it could in its final possession of regulation, the Aggies took over from their 21-yard-line with 38 seconds left.
Fuentes didn’t miss on the end-of-regulation drive, going first to Cooley for 18 yards, Gary Coleman for 9, again to Cooley for 20 and Kevin Curtis for 14 before Kidman booted in the 37-yard game-extender with three seconds remaining.
The previous 59 and one-half minutes before the final USU drive was, to say the least, gruesome football.
The Aggies had six total turnovers (four fumbles and two interceptions) and the Trojans had two (both fumbles).
The scoring started early in the first quarter after USU defensive-end Justin Jackson recovered a Bearden fumble at the Trojan 6-yard-line with 12:58 remaining.
The Aggies grabbed a 7-0 lead 12 seconds later as Fuentes connected with Kenny Coleman for a five-yard touchdown pass.
USU would not score again until the 2:58 mark of the fourth quarter.
TSU punted on its first two drives but found the end zone on its third.
After blocking a Steve Mullins punt the Trojans drove 30 yards in six plays as LeBarron Black ran in the 1-yard equalizer.
Samuel fumbled on USU’s next possession on the Aggie 44-yard line.
The Trojans capitalized, taking a 10-7 lead with a 23-yard field goal just over two-minutes later. At the 3:38 mark of the second quarter TSU put in another field goal for a 13-7 lead.
The Aggies started the next drive at their own 25 and pushed the ball up as far as their own 40. But two TSU sacks and two penalties on the Aggies for a total loss of 18 yards pushed USU back to its own 22 where an attempted punt was fumbled by Mullins and recovered by TSU’s Leverne Johnson at the USU 10.
The Trojans then put in a field goal, their final score of the game, to take a 16-7 lead at the half.
“It’s not that hard [for us to score],” Samuel said. “We’ve got a good offense and we can produce. It just [depends on] when we want to do it. Sometimes it seems like we don’t want to, but when we really do, we show what we can do.”
-samhis@cc.usu.edu