Oregon Wins First Rose Bowl in 95 Years at LinesMaker

Oregon Wins First Rose Bowl in 95 Years

PASADENA, Calif. – Chip Kelly expected the avalanche of offense pro­duced by Ore­gon and Wis­con­sin in the 98th Rose Bowl, know­ing his Ducks would need the late breaks that always eluded them in their BCS bowl losses the past two years.

Maybe that’s why the Ducks coach prac­ti­cally took flight in excite­ment when Wis­con­sin receiver Jared Abbred­eris’ fum­ble in the final min­utes plopped right down near the Ore­gon side­line, inex­plic­a­bly nestling in the grass like an Easter egg for Michael Clay to find.

Ore­gon has been very good through­out Kelly’s three sea­sons. The Ducks finally were lucky as well Mon­day night, and now they’re Rose Bowl cham­pi­ons for the first time in 95 years.

Dar­ron Thomas passed for three touch­downs, De’Anthony Thomas scored on runs of 91 and 64 yards, and the No. 6 Ducks earned their first bowl vic­tory under Kelly, hold­ing off the Bad­gers 45–38 in the highest-scoring Rose Bowl ever played.

“Any time you win, it feels unbe­liev­able, and the thing that gets you excited is when you can share it with your play­ers,” said Kelly, whose leap­ing excite­ment after Abbred­eris’ fum­ble betrayed excite­ment behind that calmly cere­bral exte­rior. “When they see the fruits of their labor pay off, that’s why you win. I’ve never been around a harder-working group of guys.”

The Ducks (12–2) needed more than hard work to sur­vive this slugfest between two of the nation’s top offenses. They needed two strokes of good for­tune in the final minutes.

After Abbred­eris’ fum­ble and a punt with 23 sec­onds left, Rus­sell Wil­son moved the Bad­gers to the Ore­gon 25 with two long passes, but the Bad­gers were down to 2 sec­onds and no time­outs. After wait­ing for the ball to be set, Wil­son spiked it to set up a last-ditch heave to the end zone, but the clock hit zeros while he did it.

The Ducks held each other back on the side­line dur­ing a video review that con­firmed time had run out. They stormed the hal­lowed field after hold­ing Wis­con­sin score­less in the fourth quar­ter, cel­e­brat­ing the biggest vic­tory yet in Kelly’s three-year foot­ball revolution.

“We had no doubt this year that we were going to come out and do big things,” said Dar­ron Thomas, who passed for 268 yards. “It’s a big state­ment for the Ore­gon program.”

Indeed: The last time Ore­gon won the Rose Bowl, beat­ing Penn 14–0 in 1917, the play­ers wore leather hel­mets, not the impos­si­bly shiny cre­ations they sported Mon­day. The Ducks’ inno­va­tions aren’t con­fined to their wardrobes, and Ore­gon has now proved its unortho­dox style can win even the biggest games.

“None of us were around 95 years ago, and we never talked about it,” Kelly said. “We’re a forward-thinking oper­a­tion, and we’re always look­ing ahead.”

Oregon’s forward-thinking schemes pro­duced 621 total yards– second-most in Rose Bowl his­tory– against the tough Bad­gers, play­ing at its usual fran­tic pace until the final whis­tle. Lavasier Tuinei caught eight passes for 158 yards and two TDs, includ­ing the go-ahead score with 14:35 to play.

Mon­tee Ball rushed for 122 of his 164 yards in the first half for the Bad­gers (11–3), who lost the Rose Bowl for the sec­ond straight year despite man­ag­ing 508 yards of their own. Wil­son repeat­edly moved Wis­con­sin in the final min­utes of his spec­tac­u­lar sin­gle sea­son, but Abbred­eris’ mis­take and the expir­ing clock were too much.

“It would have been nice to have a chance there,” said Wil­son, who passed for 296 yards and two scores. “With 1 sec­ond left, I think we could have capitalized.”

The Ducks don’t doubt it. The Grand­daddy of Them All had never seen this many points, beat­ing the record 80 scored by Wash­ing­ton and Iowa in 1991.

“We knew we had to score almost every time we touched the ball,” Wis­con­sin tail­back James White said.

The Ducks and Bad­gers pro­duced the highest-scoring first quar­ter (14–14) and first half (28–28) in Rose Bowl his­tory, even­tu­ally sur­pass­ing Washington’s 46–34 win over Iowa 21 years ago when Wis­con­sin coach Bret Bielema was a Hawkeyes line­man. Oregon’s yardage fell just short of USC’s 633 yards against Illi­nois in 2008.

Ball tied Barry Sanders’ FBS record with his 39th touch­down of the sea­son, but the Heis­man Tro­phy final­ist was held to three car­ries for no yards in the fourth quar­ter. Every Bad­gers skill player had regrets about the score­less fourth quar­ter– nobody more than Abbrederis.

“I have to be more care­ful with the ball,” said Abbred­eris, who made a TD catch on the open­ing drive. “They made a big play. I can’t dwell on this. I have to move for­ward and look towards next year. We’re all human. This will make me better.”

Tuinei was named the Ducks’ offen­sive player of the game, but their flashiest star in those futur­is­tic hel­mets was De’Anthony Thomas, the fresh­man from Los Ange­les who showed off his elec­tri­fy­ing ath­leti­cism on the longest scor­ing run in Rose Bowl his­tory in the sec­ond quar­ter, going 91 yards up the mid­dle. He added the 64-yard scor­ing run in the open­ing minute of the sec­ond half as Ore­gon won the matchup of the last two losers of the Rose Bowl.

Wis­con­sin lost 21–19 to TCU last sea­son, and the Ducks lost to Ohio State two years ago before los­ing the BCS title game last year.

“It almost felt like there was some sort of mag­i­cal force keep­ing us from get­ting it done in bowl games,” Ore­gon guard Car­son York said. “Glad we did it today.”

LaMichael James rushed for 159 yards and an early TD in his likely col­lege finale for the Ducks, and Ken­jon Barner caught a TD pass from Dar­ron Thomas.

Nick Toon caught a TD pass for Wis­con­sin, and defen­sive end Louis Nzegwu returned a fum­ble 33 yards for a score in the sec­ond quarter.

Both teams won their respec­tive con­fer­ences’ first-ever league title games to earn this trip to Pasadena. Although the Ducks’ drought was gen­er­a­tions longer, Wis­con­sin hasn’t won in Pasadena since Jan. 1, 2000, when Ron Dayne led the Bad­gers to back-to-back Rose Bowl titles.

Ore­gon quickly debunked the the­ory that teams with extra time to pre­pare for the Ducks’ inven­tive offense have a bet­ter chance to stop it. The Ducks were 1–4 in bowl games and sea­son open­ers under Kelly until they carved up Wis­con­sin with the second-biggest yardage per­for­mance in Rose Bowl history.

De’Anthony Thomas ended the record-breaking first quar­ter by burst­ing through the Wis­con­sin line and sprint­ing down the Ore­gon side­line, sur­pass­ing Tyrone Wheatley’s bowl-record 88-yard run in 1993 and cap­ping the second-longest scor­ing drive in Rose Bowl his­tory at 95 yards.

Both defenses then got a brief chance to shine in the sec­ond quar­ter: The Ducks stopped Wis­con­sin on fourth down inside the Ore­gon 20, but blitz­ing Wis­con­sin line­backer Mike Tay­lor forced Dar­ron Thomas’ fum­ble moments later, and Nzegwu scooped it up and scored.

De’Anthony Thomas’ 64-yard TD run put Ore­gon ahead for the first time, but the Bad­gers swung ahead with Wilson’s 18-yard TD pass to Toon. After the quar­ter­backs traded inter­cep­tions, Dar­ron Thomas found Tuinei for his sec­ond score just 25 sec­onds into the fourth quar­ter, putting the Ducks ahead to stay.

NOTES: The game-time tem­per­a­ture was 82 degrees, mak­ing it the warmest bowl game in Wis­con­sin his­tory. … It was also the highest-scoring bowl game in Wis­con­sin his­tory, and the Bad­gers tied the school bowl record with 38 points. … Ore­gon is 2–4 in the Rose Bowl. … Ore­gon LB Kiko Alonso was the defen­sive player of the game with an inter­cep­tion and 1 1/2 sacks.

Our 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: Ore­gon wins first Rose Bowl in 95 years .

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