WVU Sets Bowl Scoring Mark in 70-33 Rout at LinesMaker

WVU Sets Bowl Scoring Mark in 70–33 Rout

MIAMI – The West Vir­ginia Moun­taineers were tough to slow down, and only the Orange Bowl mas­cot could stop Dar­win Cook.

Geno Smith tied the record for any bowl game with six touch­down passes, and the No. 23-ranked Moun­taineers set a bowl scor­ing record Wednes­day night with their high-powered offense. But safety Cook made the piv­otal play by return­ing a fum­ble 99 yards for a touch­down to break the game open and help rout No. 14 Clem­son 70–33.

Cook col­lided com­i­cally with mas­cot Obie after scor­ing one of the Moun­taineers’ five TDs in the sec­ond quar­ter, includ­ing three in the final 2:29 for a 49–20 lead. It was the highest-scoring half by a team in a bowl game.

“I always envi­sioned mak­ing great plays,” Cook said. “If you think it will hap­pen, it will happen.”

Tavon Austin tied a record for any bowl game with four touch­down catches. Smith went 31 for 42, and had 401 yards pass­ing to break Tom Brady’s Orange Bowl record. Smith also ran for a score, help­ing West Vir­ginia break the bowl record for points estab­lished six nights ear­lier when Bay­lor beat Wash­ing­ton 67–56 in the Alamo Bowl.

“Never could we imag­ine we’d put up 70 points,” Smith said.

The Moun­taineers (10–3) won in their first Orange Bowl appear­ance and improved to 3–0 in Bowl Cham­pi­onship Series games.

“The guys wanted to come in and make a state­ment, and the only way you can do that is if you play well on all three sides of the ball,” coach Dana Hol­gorsen said.

Clem­son (10–4) lost play­ing in its first major bowl in 30 years.

“We’re a bet­ter team than we played tonight,” coach Dabo Swin­ney said. “Just too many mis­takes. But we’ll be back.”

The offen­sive show­case was the lat­est in a suc­ces­sion this bowl sea­son, and per­haps the last. Defense is expected to dom­i­nate in the final BCS game Mon­day night when Louisiana State faces Alabama for the national title.

Tack­lers had their hands full– or rather, they didn’t– on a chilly night in Miami. Smith and Austin com­bined on scor­ing passes of 8, 27, 3 and 37 yards, and Shawne Alston scored on two short runs for West Vir­ginia, which totaled 589 yards and 31 first downs. Smith was cho­sen the game’s out­stand­ing player.

Even when Clem­son man­aged to cor­ral the Moun­taineers, the play wasn’t always over. Andrew Buie rolled over a defender but was never downed, so he got up and ran for an addi­tional 18 yards.

Clem­son couldn’t keep up with the Big East Con­fer­ence co-champions, although Andre Elling­ton did score the game’s first points on a 68-yard run. First-team All-Americans Sammy Watkins and Dwayne Allen com­bined for only seven catches for 87 yards.

“We kind of got down when they scored so many points in such a short amount of time,” Watkins said.

Amid the flurry of points, it was a defender who came up with second-longest scor­ing play in Orange Bowl history.

Clem­son was on the verge of tak­ing the lead in the sec­ond quar­ter when Elling­ton ran up the mid­dle and dis­ap­peared into a heap at the 1. A team­mate sig­naled touch­down, but the ball came loose and Cook grabbed it, then took off with noth­ing but the end zone in front of him.

“I saw the ball come loose,” he said. “I grabbed it. I didn’t hear a whis­tle, so I ran.”

After Cook crossed the goal line, he glee­fully leaped on mas­cot Obie, a smil­ing orange, and they both tum­bled to the turf. Obie rose unhurt and resumed her duties.

Cook and Obie met on the field after the game and shared a hug.

“I didn’t know you were a girl,” he told the mas­cot. “I apologize.”

Smith, stand­ing in the side­line, watched a video replay of Cook’s touch­down in disbelief.

“Crazy, man,” Smith said. “When I saw that, I knew things were break­ing our way.”

The poten­tial 14-point swing seemed to deflect the Tigers, who had moved the ball almost at will to that point.

“It was a pretty big moment,” Swin­ney said. “They hadn’t really stopped us. That was huge. Then it snow­balled quickly.”

The Tigers were doomed when quar­ter­back Tajh Boyd com­mit­ted sub­se­quent turnovers on con­sec­u­tive Clem­son plays.

After Smith ran 7 yards on a keeper for a 35–20 lead, Pat Miller inter­cepted Boyd’s pass. Smith flipped a 1-yard touch­down pass to Austin and, on the next play, a call was over­turned, with the replay offi­cial deter­min­ing Boyd had lost a fumble.

Alston then ran for a 1-yard touch­down with 4 sec­onds left in the half.

“Momen­tum swung not in our favor, and it was hard to recap­ture,” Boyd said. “West Vir­ginia is a great offense. You can’t really get behind them. We couldn’t stop them. Guys were gassed. Their legs were going. It was a tough loss – pretty embarrassing.”

Defen­sive woes were noth­ing new for the Tigers, who won their first Atlantic Coast Con­fer­ence title in 20 years but gave up at least 30 points in six regular-season games.

Clem­son kept pace for a while, lead­ing 17–14 after one period. It was the highest-scoring first quar­ter and first half in Orange Bowl history.

West Vir­ginia went ahead for the first time early in the sec­ond period on an 80-yard touch­down drive capped by Austin’s 27-yard catch, mak­ing the score 21–17. Cook’s take­away touch­down came next, and the Moun­taineers were off to the races.

“You don’t score 70 points by being good on offense,” Hol­gorsen said. “You score 70 points by being good on all three sides of the ball.”

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 sets bowl scor­ing mark in 70–33 rout .

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