Wolf Pack 31, Aggies 28
Game 7. Loss 7. It was the same old story Saturday for USU football. For the fourth time this season, the Aggies held a lead and had possession in the fourth quarter. For the fourth time this season, the Aggies couldn’t hold on, this time losing 31-28 to the visiting Nevada Wolf Pack (3-4, 1-2 in Western Athletic Conference play). Though the performance was a drastic improvement from last year’s 45-0 loss in Reno, Nev., USU Head Coach Brent Guy rejected any sense of moral victory. “No. No. We’ve got to win in the fourth quarter,” Guy said. “That’s why there are so many tears in the locker room right now: Because we’ve seen this movie four times already. We’ve already bought that ticket three times. We’ve got to find a way. I’ve got to find a way. I’ve got to convince them they can do those things.” The Aggies also held the lead in the final quarter vs. UNLV, Wyoming and San Jose State.
HOW IT HAPPENED Late in the third quarter Saturday, USU safety James Brindley recovered a fumble at the Nevada 36-yard line. Aggie senior quarterback Leon Jackson III then found tight end Rob Meyers for a 23-yard pass completion. Two plays later, just after the fourth quarter had began, Jackson followed his blocks and stumbled into the end zone for a 10-yard touchdown. The play pulled USU back in front, 28-24, with 14:08 left in the game. Opportunity knocked for USU on the fourth play of the Wolf Pack’s next possession. USU sophomore linebacker Paul Igboeli forced a fumble on Pack running back Luke Lippincott. Brindley recovered it at the USU 46-yard line. USU could manage nothing on its ensuing drive: USU running back Derrvin Speight rushed for minus three yards, Jackson ran for four, and Speight caught a pass for minus three more yards. The Pack responded with a nine-play (six of which were rushes), 73-yard scoring drive that took off nearly four minutes from game clock and gave the Pack a 31-28 lead. Hurting USU the most on that drive was the sixth play. Nevada quarterback Colin Kaepernick fumbled the ball in open field into USU linebacker Jake Hutton’s arms, but Hutton bobbled it. “I’m putting that on me,” Hutton said. “That’s what is killing us as a team. We need to step up and make that one play at the end of the game. You don’t know when it’s going to come up in a game, but playmakers need to step up and make plays like that. I bobbled it and didn’t recover it. I take responsibility for that.” Opportunity knocked a final time. Aggie wide receiver Kevin Robinson took the final kickoff back 45 yards, even going laterally from one side of the field to the other in search of more yardage. His effort put the offense at the Wolf Pack 39-yard line. Jackson rushed for two yards. Then he gave the ball to wide receiver Diondre Borel, who looked deep for Robinson, but was sacked for a six-yard loss before he could finish the play. Jackson was sacked for a 10-yard loss to complete the offensive blunder.
AGS LEAPED OUT OF FIRST-QUARTER HOLE The Wolf Pack scored touchdowns on their first two drives of the game. The first drive was 10 plays, 85 yards, and took 4:41 off the clock. The second started from the Aggie 29-yard line after Jackson was picked off by Wolf Pack linebacker Ezra Butler. The Aggie offense sparked on the next drive, going 70 yards on 13 plays. Jackson sneaked in a one-yard touchdown. Aggie defensive ends Carl Singleton and Ben Calderwod both recorded sacks on Nevada’s next drive, which was the first fruitless one of the day for the Pack. On USU’s following drive, Jackson lost a fumble at midfield. Fortunately, the Aggie defense then stopped Nevada on a fourth-and-one. The Aggie offense put together another solid drive-this time 10 plays, 65 yards, and topped off by a 12-yard touchdown run by Speight. The Pack were held to another four-and-out, and Robinson punished them with a 70-yard punt return to the end zone to give USU a 21-14 advantage at the intermission. “I was very proud of my football team in the first half,” Guy said. “We spotted them 14 and came back with 21 unanswered points … This was probably the most courageous I’ve seen them play.”
PACK STATISTICAL DOMINATION Nevada’s time of possession was 37:13, 22 minutes of which came in the second half. The Aggies time of possession was 22:47 for the entire game. The third quarter was the monster: Nevada 11:53, USU 3:07. Kaepernick, a freshman, passed for 170 yards. Jackson tallied only 106 yards. The Pack had 27 first downs-17 of them rushing-compared to USU’s 12. The Pack netted 472 yards of total offense. The Aggies had 212. Lippincott, a junior for Nevada, had 244 yards rushing. The Aggies as a team had 106. The Pack as a team had 302 yards. Why was Nevada able to run so effectively? “Because they do a very good job at knocking guys out of gaps,” Guy said. “That was one of our goals defensivly to be gap sound. They did nothing different (than they did vs. Bosie State last week). They do a good job on their blocks and finishing guys. You’ve got to get off a block and make a play. We were not able to do that, unfortunately.” Nevada ran 80 plays. USU ran 53. Nevada fumbled four times, losing two. Utah State fumbled once. -samuel.hislop@aggiemail.usu.edu