College Football: two heartbreakers (from my point of view)

(yahoo gallery)

The first game I watched was Pitt-Notre Dame. That one ended 36-33, Panthers in 4 overtimes.

Basically, ND benefited from a tipped pass and Pitt mistakes to take a 17-3 halftime lead, but the Panthers outplayed the Irish in the second half to tie the game at 24 apiece with 2:22 left.

ND got the ball and moved it to midfield but failed on a 4′th an 1 conversion, thereby giving it to Pitt at midfield with a few seconds left. But ND intercepted a Pitt pass to send the game into overtime.

In the overtime, it was a battle of field goals; the most surprising one being when the ND kicker made a 48 yarder after a sack; that sent the game into overtime period 4. But ND missed a 38 yarder in that overtime which set up Pitt for the win.

In the nightcap, Texas Tech came out strong on their first drive and, when they couldn’t convert, they pinned Texas on its own 2 yard line. On the first play, they tackled a UT running back in the endzone for a saftey.

Tech went on to dominate the first half taking a 22-3 lead until a late Texas drive cut it to 22-6; still the Red Raiders were dominating play.

It was a different story for much of the second half; after pinning Tech deep in its own territory with a punt, Shipley ran back a Tech punt to cut the lead to 22-13.

An interception return put Tech back in front 29-13; but for the most part the Longhorns shut down the potent Red Raider attack in the second half.

The Longhorns rallied with a long drive to cut the lead to 29-19 and then with a 91 yard TD pass to cut the lead to 29-26.

The Red Raiders drove the ball close enough to kick a field goal and go up 32-26 with 5:45 to go.

Still the Longhorns came back with a long drive. Mixing up plays, UT scored on a run to go up 33-32 with 1:40 left in the game; that was too much time.

A fine kick off return set Tech up at their 37 yard line and then Tech went to work.
They moved the ball to the Texas 28 with 15 seconds left, and a Longhorn defensive back barely missed an interception off of a tipped ball.

With 8 seconds to go, Harrell hit Crabtree with a pass inside the 8 yard line; Crabtree shook off a tackle attempt to score a TD with 1 second left. Tech kicked the point to go up 39-33.

The game wasn’t over; the Red Raiders still had to kick off from the 7.5 yard line due to two unsportsmanlike penalties on their fans (storming the field); but on the kick-off attempt, Texas fumbled a lateral and Tech held on to win.