Beavers Grind Out A Win In Boulder
Oregon State again scored first after a solid first quarter drive, courtesy of the Aiden Chiles 3rd drive package, and led the rest of the way in beating Colorado 26-19 in a Saturday night slog in Boulder.
It took a while to build what should have been a commanding lead, in part due to a couple of fumbles and a couple of drops.
But a drive at the end of the second quarter that was as brilliant as the last drive of the first half last Saturday night in Tucson was bad built a 14-3 halftime lead when DJ Uiagalelei connected with Deshaun Fenwick for a 20 yard touchdown 16 seconds before the break.
Uiagalelei capped an 85 yard drive that chewed up half the 3rd quarter with a 1 yard touchdown barge into the endzone, and the extra point put the Beavers up 18.
However, Colorado was offsides on the PAT kick, and Oregon State Coach Jonathan Smith once again made a nonsensical decision to take the point off the board, and try go for 2. A bad snap led directly to a scoop and score by the Buffs’ Kyndrich Breedlove, and suddenly it was only a 2 possession game, with the Beavers up only 20-5.
Oregon State added an Atticus Sappington field goal when their next drive stalled at the Colorado 5 yard line, but the Buff offense, which came into the contest in the top 3 in the nation in both passing touchdowns and passing yards, that had been bottled up for better than 3 quarters finally got rolling.
Shedeur Sanders wrapped a couple of 75 yard touchdown drives, capped by touchdown completions to Travis Hunter and Anthony Hankerson, that took barely over 3 minutes each, around another Sappington field goal that turned out to be the only reason the Beavers even won by a touchdown.
The win was preserved by the Oregon State offensive line and running game, which had been dominant all night, by grinding out a first down on a 10 yard Damien Martinez run that forced Colorado to exhaust their timeouts, and the Beavers to run out the clock.
Martinez ran for 115 yards on 21 carries, and Deshaun Fenwick accounted for another 59 yards, and ate up a lot of minutes.
Chiles and Uiagalelei added another 45 yards even with sacks, and both ran for a touchdown.
Uiagalelei completed only 12 of 24 passes, but they did cover 223 yards, and 5 of the completions were for 18 or more yards.
Had it not been unnecessarily close by a possession because of another episode of bad game management, it would have been a classic Oregon State performance.
The Beavers head home after a month on the road with a 7-2 record, 4-2 in conference, to meet Stanford. The Cardinal defeated Washington State 10-7 tonight in Pullman.
Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com