Purdue Holds on to Win Pizza Bowl 37-32 at LinesMaker

Purdue Holds on to Win Pizza Bowl 37–32

DETROIT – West­ern Michi­gan started strong and closed with a shot to earns its first bowl win in school history.

Let­ting Pur­due recover two onside kicks in the first half doomed the Bron­cos’ chances.

The Boil­er­mak­ers made two gam­bles on spe­cial teams pay off in a 37–32 win over West­ern Michi­gan on Tues­day night in the Lit­tle Cae­sars Pizza Bowl.

“Two onside kicks really hurt us,” West­ern Michi­gan coach Bill Cubit said. “We never got a break on defense in the first half.”

Purdue’s Raheem Mostert returned a kick­off 99 yards for a touch­down, third-string run­ning back Reg­gie Pegram scored the first two TDs of his career and Car­son Wiggs made two field goals to give the Boil­er­mak­ers a 27–15 lead at halftime.

Pur­due (7–6) had another 12-point lead early in the fourth quar­ter, but the Big Ten team had to hold on for the win against the Mid-American Con­fer­ence program.

The Bron­cos (7–6) got the ball with a chance to go ahead, but their come­back hopes ended when quar­ter­back Alex Carder fum­bled for his fifth turnover with just under 2 min­utes left.

“I took too many chances with the ball,” Carder said.

Ryan Rus­sell forced the final fum­ble and Bruce Gas­ton recov­ered to seal the win in a game that enter­tained 46,177 fans inside the home of the Detroit Lions.

The Boil­er­mak­ers played in a bowl for the first time since 2007, when they beat Cen­tral Michi­gan– also in Detroit.

West­ern Michi­gan, which had leads of 8–0 and 15–10 in the first half along with an oppor­tu­nity to drive for a go-ahead score at the end, fell to 0–5 in post­sea­son play.

“I thought we’d win and walk out of here happy,” Cubit said.

West­ern Michigan’s star receiver, Jor­dan White, who drew at least one NFL scout to watch him, caught 13 passes– includ­ing a one-handed grab– for 249 yards and a score. He was given a sixth sea­son of eli­gi­bil­ity this year because of injuries.

“It hurts, the real­ity is I won’t get a sev­enth year,” White said. “The games are over now and we didn’t win a MAC cham­pi­onship or a big bowl game. I feel like there was a lot left undone on my part. I’m dis­ap­pointed right now.”

Carder was 31 of 57 for 413 yards with three TDs– also con­nect­ing with Josh Schaf­fer and Chleb Ravenell for scores. But the junior matched a career high with four inter­cep­tions and gave up the ball a fifth time to end the Bron­cos’ chances to rally for the vic­tory in their home­s­tate in front of many of their fans.

“We’re about 10 points from being 10–3,” said White, who set MAC marks for yards receiv­ing in a sea­son and career. “I think we had all the pieces to the puz­zle, but we didn’t make it hap­pen on the field.”

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: Pur­due holds on to win Pizza Bowl 37–32 .

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