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Howard's Arm Leads WVU Past Arizona State
January 03, 2016 03:47 AM | Football
PHOENIX – Skyler Howard’s 15-yard touchdown pass to backup quarterback David Sills with 2:19 left in the fourth quarter gave West Virginia a 43-42, come-from-behind victory over Arizona State in the 2016 Motel 6 Cactus Bowl at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Long game, but good outcome,” said West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen. “I’m proud of these guys; proud of my seniors, and proud of my team. We were the underdog, the visiting team, playing against a team on their turf and we found a way to win.”
Yes, Tom Bodett left the lights on tonight.
In what was basically a home game for ASU that didn’t end until 2:30 EST, West Virginia was able to take advantage of one of college football’s worst pass defenses to rack up 672 yards of offense - 532 of those coming from Howard’s arm.
“We knew it was going to be high-risk, high-reward, and if we could hold up up front we were going to get some shots downfield and they came down with them,” said Howard, voted offensive MVP for tonight’s game.
The junior completed 28 of his 51 pass attempts with five touchdowns, his 532 yards passing the second-best yardage total in school history and the most ever by a WVU quarterback in a bowl game.
New York Jets quarterback Geno Smith holds the school record with 656 yards in West Virginia’s 70-63 victory over Baylor in 2012.
Howard’s touchdown passes covered 59, 10, 64 and 15 yards – two going to Daikiel Shorts, and one each to Shelton Gibson, Gary Jennings and Sills.
“They’re good up front and I think they blitzed 100 percent of the time, and we knew they would,” said Holgorsen. “We’ve worked hard in the passing game, we made a couple of adjustments and I’m really proud of Skyler.”
Tonight’s back-and-forth game boiled down to the final three possessions when Arizona State got the football back at its own 27 with 6:19 left in the fourth quarter and trailing 36-35.
The Sun Devils (6-7) got 15 free yards when Shaq Petteway was whistled for a personal foul penalty, moving the ball out to the ASU 42. Two ineffective plays presented Arizona State with a third and 10, where quarterback Mike Bercovici found Gary Chambers out in the flat beyond the first down marker.
Dravon Askew-Henry fell down on the play, and Chambers was able to break out into the open and race into the end zone to complete a 52-yard touchdown to put the Sun Devils back in the lead once again.
ASU also had leads of 10-9 in the first quarter, 25-22 at the beginning of the third quarter, and 32-29 with 4:35 remaining in the third quarter.
Following Chambers’ touchdown, Arizona State coach Todd Graham mysteriously chose to kick the extra point instead of going for two to try and make it a seven-point game.
“It’s my fault,” said Graham. “In the fourth quarter we have a chart, a box, that we go off of, and we were supposed to be going for two and we didn’t. That was mismanagement on our part and that’s my responsibility.”
Instead, West Virginia (8-5) started its winning drive at its own 25 with 4:56 remaining trailing by six.
WVU immediately got a first down on an 11-yard Howard run up the middle to the 36. Following an incomplete pass and a short Howard pass out in the flat to Wendell Smallwood, Howard passed 20 yards to Jordan Thompson for a first down to the ASU 40.
Howard then hit Shorts for 13 yards to the ASU 27, giving the Mountaineers another fresh set of downs.
Then came an incomplete pass and a 10-yard loss when Howard was sacked by Antonio Longino, Howard fumbling on the play and senior Cody Clay falling on the ball at the WVU 39.
On both occasions Arizona State blitzed, and the Sun Devils brought all-out pressure once again on third and 22. Howard handed the ball off to Wendell Smallwood and the junior made a great cut to slip past the first wave of the blitzers to run 24 yards to the ASU 15.
“We finally got them playing off,” noted Holgorsen. “It was the right call and he made a great cut. (Howard) made the right call - as he usually does.”
On the next play Howard found Sills in single coverage at the WVU four and he was able to turn up field and get into the end zone with only 2:44 showing on the clock.
West Virginia’s special teams, problematic all night, once again put the Mountaineers in a bind when Josh Lambert’s short kickoff to the ASU 30 was returned 10 yards by De’Chevon Hayes to the 40.
On second down, Kalen Ballage ran 10 yards to give ASU a first down at midfield and then three incomplete Bercovici passes made it fourth and 10.
A fourth Bercovici pass, intended to tight end Kody Kohl over the middle, skipped on the turf, and after a brief consultation by tonight’s Big Ten officiating crew, WVU took over the football on downs at the 50.
Two Howard runs, the second for 11 yards and a first down, were enough to run off the remaining 1:26 on the clock.
Bercovici completed 29-of-52 passes for 418 yards and four touchdowns – two of those going to Tim White – and the Sun Devils finished the night with 520 total yards.
West Virginia’s top receivers were Shelton Gibson (143 yards), Ka’Raun White (116 yards) and Shorts (97 yards).
“We kept getting guys open and we made throw after throw after throw and those young guys began making plays toward the end of the second quarter and then in the second half,” said Holgorsen.
“We just couldn’t contain the vertical pass,” added Graham.
Smallwood carried the ball 13 times for 72 yards to lead all rushers. He finished an outstanding 2015 campaign with 1,519 yards rushing – the most by a WVU back since All-American Steve Slaton’s 1,744 yards in 2006 and the fourth-most in school history.
Howard finished 2015 by completing 221-of-403 passes for 3,145 yards and 26 touchdowns with 14 interceptions – statistically one of the better passing seasons ever for a Mountaineer quarterback. In fact, his 3,145 passing yards were the fifth-most ever for a WVU quarterback.
Josh Lambert kicked three field goals for WVU, covering distances of 21, 31 and 27 yards, while ASU’s Zane Gonzalez converted four from 37, 19, 35 and 48 yards.
The announced attendance for tonight’s game was 39,321.
West Virginia’s victory tonight gives the Mountaineers eight victories for the first time since joining the Big 12 Conference in 2012, and the first bowl victory since defeating Clemson in the Orange Bowl in 2011.
“We don’t consider this the start of the 2016 season but rather the end of the 2015 season,” said Holgorsen. “We had high expectations coming into this year, we started out pretty good, caught four really good Big 12 football teams on four really bad days for us, but didn’t quit and we wanted to finish this season better than any other West Virginia University Big 12 team has finished, and we did it.
“That’s a positive thing and something we can build on. We’re going to enjoy this one for a while and then we’ll get back to work in a couple of weeks,” said Holgorsen.
West Virginia’s victory tonight was its 15th in 34 all-time bowl appearances dating back to 1922, and snaps a two-game bowl losing streak to Syracuse in 2012 and to Texas A&M last season. Holgorsen is now 2-2 in bowl games as WVU’s head coach.
Tonight's win, couple with TCU's comeback victory over Oregon in the Alamo Bowl, softened the blow for an otherwise difficult bowl season for the Big 12 that saw conference teams lose four out of its five games heading into today's action.
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