Missed FGs Help Cowboys Win Fiesta in OT at LinesMaker

Missed FGs Help Cowboys Win Fiesta in OT

GLENDALE, Ariz. – The BCS sys­tem left Okla­homa State bitter.

After a thrilling win in the Fiesta Bowl, the Cow­boys have a chance to throw stick in the spokes.

Sur­viv­ing a missed field goal at the end of reg­u­la­tion and get­ting a big kick of its own in over­time, No. 3 Okla­homa State opened the door for the chance at a split national cham­pi­onship with a wildly enter­tain­ing 41–38 win over No. 4 Stan­ford on Mon­day night.

“We feel like we could beat any­one in the coun­try,” Cow­boys receiver Colton Chelf said.

Okla­homa State (12–1) kept pace with Andrew Luck and the high-scoring Car­di­nal, get­ting huge per­for­mances from its two stars, Bran­don Wee­den and Justin Black­mon, in their final col­le­giate game. Wee­den threw for 399 yards and three touch­down passes to Black­mon, who announced he’s leav­ing for the NFL after catch­ing eight passes for 186 yards.

All that and the Cow­boys’ for­tunes came down to two legs, those of Stan­ford kicker Jor­dan Williamson and their own Jor­dan Sharp.

Williamson couldn’t come through. The red­shirt fresh­man missed a 35-yard field goal wide left as time expired in reg­u­la­tion and another from 43 yards to open overtime.

Given a chip shot after Wee­den hit Chelf on a 24-yard pass– ini­tially ruled a touch­down but over­turned on review– Sharp came through, send­ing his 22-yard field goal through the uprights and the Cow­boys charg­ing onto the field.

Should Alabama knock off top-ranked LSU in next week’s BCS cham­pi­onship game, Okla­homa State will be right there, ready to stake its claim at being No. 1 in The Asso­ci­ated Press poll.

“There is noth­ing we can do from here,” said Black­mon, a pro­jected first-round NFL pick who tied the Fiesta Bowl record with his three touch­downs. “I do think we do have the best team in the nation.”

Stan­ford (11–2) had its chances.

The Car­di­nal had 590 yards of offense– nearly 200 more than Okla­homa State – got another stel­lar game from Luck before he heads off to the NFL and ran over Okla­homa State’s defense behind Step­fan Taylor.

They just couldn’t fin­ish it off.

Luck calmly led Stan­ford 63 yards over the final 2:35 of reg­u­la­tion to set up a chance at win­ning its sec­ond BCS bowl game in two years. Instead, Williamson missed in reg­u­la­tion, again in over­time and was left sob­bing in front of his locker while his coaches and team­mates tried to shoul­der some of the blame.

“In the end, we lost, and I’m as much to blame as any­one,” Luck said.

Tay­lor ran for 177 yards and a pair of scores. Luck was his usual steady self, hit­ting 27 of 31 passes for 347 yards and two touch­downs with an inter­cep­tion. The Car­di­nal held Okla­homa State to 15 yards rush­ing on 13 car­ries and didn’t give up the lead until the final play.

It still wasn’t enough, the Cardinal’s hopes sail­ing wide left off the right foot of Williamson, who missed three field goals after miss­ing three all season.

“There’s an old say­ing that adver­sity reveals char­ac­ter– and that’s not just for him, that’s for all of us,” Stan­ford coach David Shaw said.

The Fiesta Bowl needed a pick-me-up game after the year it had.

Last year’s game was a dud on pretty much all accounts. Con­necti­cut had trou­ble fill­ing its allot­ment of tick­ets and keep­ing up with Okla­homa– a 48–20 rout– lead­ing to a big dip in the ratings.

Not long after that, the bowl got tan­gled in con­tro­versy, nearly los­ing its BCS sta­tus fol­low­ing finan­cial impro­pri­eties that were uncov­ered and led to the fir­ing of exec­u­tive direc­tor John Junker.

This matchup fig­ured to be the ticket to match the golden jack­ets worn by Fiesta Bowl officials.

Okla­homa State has an elec­tri­fy­ing offense– sec­ond in scor­ing, third in total yards– run by the 28-year-old Wee­den and fea­tur­ing Black­mon, the two-time Bilet­nikoff Award winner.

The Cow­boys also came in with a chip on their shoul­der, believ­ing they should have got­ten a shot at the BCS title game instead of it being a rematch of the field-goal-kicking Game of the Cen­tury ear­lier this sea­son between Alabama and LSU.

Fin­ish­ing a tan­ta­liz­ingly close .0086 behind the Crim­son Tide in the BCS stand­ings, Okla­homa State had plenty to prove, with booster T. Boone Pick­ens say­ing the Cow­boys should get first-place votes in The Asso­ci­ated Press poll with a Fiesta win and a loss by LSU in the title game.

Across the field was Stan­ford, another one-loss team that could have a legit­i­mate beef with the BCS system.

The Car­di­nal lost to even­tual Pac-12 cham­pion Ore­gon and crushed nearly every­one else with an offense that was top-15 in scor­ing and yardage. Stan­ford also has Luck, the two-time Heis­man Tro­phy runner-up and all-but-certain No. 1 over­all NFL pick, com­ple­mented by a pow­er­ful run­ning game that’s as good as any anywhere.

The Fiesta Bowl had a pretty good lead-in, too: Oregon’s wild, 45–38 win over Wis­con­sin in the Rose Bowl.

Stan­ford had the advan­tage early, pil­ing up 225 yards while going up 14–0 early in the sec­ond quar­ter on Luck’s 53-yard touch­down pass to Ty Mont­gomery and Jeremy Stew­art ran for a 24-yard score.

With its offense stranded in the desert early and Black­mon nowhere to be found, Okla­homa State got back in it quickly, thanks to Blackmon.

The junior caught his first pass by split­ting the mid­dle of Stanford’s defense for a 43-yard touch­down catch in the sec­ond quar­ter, then showed off his power on the next, brush­ing off a defender like a jacket over his shoul­der before rac­ing for a 67-yard touch­down that tied it 14-all.

Two big catches, 110 yards and the offen­sive show was on.

Tay­lor scored on a 4-yard run and the Cow­boys answered, tying it 21-all at half­time on Weeden’s first career rush­ing touch­down, an ugly-but-effective 2-yarder.

Luck hit Zach Ertz on a 6-yard touch­down pass to open the third quar­ter and, after the teams traded field goals, Wee­den found Black­mon for a third time, on a 17-yard cross­ing pass that tied the game at 31.

Tay­lor put Stan­ford up 38–31 with 4 1/2 min­utes left, duck­ing behind Stanford’s mas­sive offen­sive line for a 1-yard touch­down. Okla­homa State answered quickly, mov­ing 67 yards in less than two min­utes to tie it on Joseph Randle’s 4-yard touch­down run.

The Cow­boys left too much time for Luck, but Stanford’s luck ran out when Williamson couldn’t come through in reg­u­la­tion and again in overtime.

Okla­homa State cel­e­brated what they thought was a touch­down by Chelf in over­time, then did it for real after the replay and Sharp’s kick.

“Our team ral­lied. Every time we got down, they just found a way to come back,” said Cow­boys coach Mike Gundy, who ded­i­cated the vic­tory to the four peo­ple who died in the Nov. 17 plane crash that killed Okla­homa State women’s bas­ket­ball coach Kurt Budke and assis­tant Miranda Serna.

And now the Cow­boys can watch the national title game with a root­ing inter­est, ready to stake their claim should the cards fall right.

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more col­lege foot­ball news see: Missed FGs help Cow­boys win Fiesta in OT .

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