WVU Leads Clemson 49-20 at Halftime at LinesMaker

WVU Leads Clemson 49–20 at Halftime

MIAMI – West Virginia’s Dar­win Cook snuffed out a poten­tial Clem­son touch­down, cre­ated a turnover, ran into the Orange Bowl record books and tack­led the over­stuffed orange that serves as the game’s mascot.

All on the same play, no less.

Go fig­ure: In a record-setting night for West Virginia’s offense, a Moun­taineers defender stole the show.

Cook stripped the ball from Clemson’s Andre Elling­ton near the goal line, turned and ran 99 yards for a West Vir­ginia touch­down early in the sec­ond quar­ter, help­ing the Moun­taineers take a 49–20 lead over Clem­son at half­time Wednes­day night. West Vir­ginia outscored Clem­son 35–3 in the sec­ond quar­ter alone, the most points ever scored by any team in any Orange Bowl quarter.

Geno Smith threw three first-half touch­downs to Tavon Austin and ran for another score for West Vir­ginia, look­ing for its third Bowl Cham­pi­onship Series game win in seven sea­sons. Shawne Alston ran for two touch­downs in the first half, the sec­ond com­ing with 4 sec­onds left. West Virginia’s 49 points and the 69 com­bined points were BCS first-half records. Austin’s three touch­down catches in the first half tied an Orange Bowl record for a game.

“We’re not play­ing well any­where,” Clem­son coach Dabo Swin­ney said as he left the field for the first half.

Elling­ton ran 68 yards for a touch­down and Sammy Watkins caught his 12th scor­ing pass of the sea­son for Clem­son, which also got a pair of field goals from Chan­dler Catanzaro.

With Clem­son hav­ing first-and-goal from the West Vir­ginia 3, Elling­ton fol­lowed a mass of block­ers toward the goal line, get­ting so close to break­ing the plane at that at least two Tigers raised their arms in cel­e­bra­tion in the touch­down signal.

They were right. Pre­ma­ture, and for the wrong team, but right nonetheless.

Cook grabbed the ball away from Elling­ton and took off on what became the longest defen­sive score in Orange Bowl his­tory, a yard longer than Greg Mather’s 98-yard fum­ble return for Navy in 1961. And at the end of the play, Cook wound up tack­ling Obie– the over­stuffed orange mas­cot for the game.

The woman inside the mas­cot cos­tume later said she was fine.

The orange-clad crew on the Clem­son side­line couldn’t say the same.

Clem­son quar­ter­back Tajh Boyd was inter­cepted with 2:13 left in the half, Smith flipped the ball to Austin for a 3-yard touch­down pass a minute later, and the West Vir­ginia lead was up to a whop­ping 42–20– not even a full quar­ter after the Moun­taineers were trail­ing 17–14. Boyd fum­bled the ball away again not long after­ward, set­ting up the sev­enth West Vir­ginia touchdown.

Among the many things that Swin­ney and West Vir­ginia coach Dana Hol­gorsen agreed on in the weeks lead­ing up to the game was that the Orange Bowl wouldn’t be lack­ing for offense.

Yep, they were right.

Ellington’s first three car­ries of the night deliv­ered a total of zero yards. His fourth went into the Orange Bowl record books, a 68-yard untouched burst for a touch­down that was the third-longest scor­ing run in the game’s history.

Unde­terred, West Vir­ginia answered quickly, thanks in large part to a spec­tac­u­lar play by Andrew Buie, who caught a pass from Smith and was tack­led at the Clem­son 28 by Tigers safety Rashard Hall. Small prob­lem: Hall’s body hit the ground, but Smith’s never did, other than his hand. He rolled off Hall, sprung back to his feet and darted about another 15 yards, help­ing set up Alston’s first rush­ing score.

Imag­ine: By half­time, that play was all but for­got­ten. Clem­son hadn’t given up 49 points in a game– for­get a half– since los­ing 55–15 to Texas Tech in 2002.

For both teams, being at the Orange Bowl brought out a sense of nostalgia.

West Vir­ginia has 19 play­ers from Florida on its ros­ter, more than half of them from the greater Miami region– includ­ing Smith and his favorite tar­get, Sted­man Bai­ley. They both played at Mira­mar High, just a few miles from Sun Life Sta­dium, the site of Wednesday’s matchup.

“It’s a tremen­dous oppor­tu­nity to be able to be down here, and we hope that the expo­sure that’s existed, not only from a South Florida stand­point but from a national stand­point– the mag­ni­tude of the game, being the only game on Wednes­day night … there’s going to be a lot of eyes on us,” Hol­gorsen said. “So we hope that it can­not only adver­tise the pro­gram and the school but also con­tinue to try to lead to as many South Florida recruits as we pos­si­bly can.”

- – —

Fol­low Tim Reynolds on Twit­ter at http://www.twitter.com/ByTimReynolds

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: WVU leads Clem­son 49–20 at half­time .

Keep cur­rent with live col­lege foot­ball lines and all the most up-to-date CFB bet­ting reports. Together with col­lege foot­ball bet­ting odds, we pro­vide bet­tors wager­ing for the reg­u­lar sea­son and Col­lege Bowls, first quar­ter and half time odds and count­less CFB foot­ball propo­si­tion bets every week­end. BetLM also fea­tures in game bet­ting for NCAA foot­ball con­tests so the bet­ting does not stop when the game starts. When bet­tors search for CFB odds and any other sports bet­ting odds, BetLM has become one of the most well known resources for online sports betting.

Founded in 1999, BetLM has a a lengthy his­tory as one of the Internet’s sig­na­ture des­ti­na­tions for pro­vid­ing sports bet­ting odds and a secure, reli­able and easy to use online wager­ing environment.

Related Posts:

• Luongo Leads Canucks Over Avs
• Jerez Day One – Raikko­nen Leads the Way for Lotus
• Shara­pova Wins, Rus­sia Leads Spain 2–0
• All­mendinger Leads Michael Shank Rac­ing to Win
• Elliott’s Sur­pris­ing Show­ing Leads to All-Star Berth

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•