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Five interceptions, fumble seal BC loss; 'Gades fall short of state title game for second straight year
| Saturday, Dec 1 2007 11:50 PM
Last Updated: Saturday, Dec 1 2007 11:56 PM
Not even the wonderful gals at Olcotts could have gift-wrapped it any better for the Mounties of Mt. San Antonio College.
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And they wanted to fight afterward?
Top-ranked Bakersfield College, so careful with the football throughout this remarkable run at a national championship, turned the ball over six times in the second half and the No. 3 seed Mounties scored 23 consecutive points to rally from a 14-point first half deficit and beat the previousky unbeaten Renegades 47-42 at Memorial Stadium to win the Southern California championship.
And just when you thought it couldn't have gotten any uglier, it did. This game, played before a season-high crowd of 12,315, went from a first half shootout, to an out and out test of survival to an all-out donnybrook that left mouth pieces, damaged egos and frazzled nerves scattered all over the place.
"It's a shame it had to end like this," said Mt. SAC coach Bob Jastrab, about the violence that broke out between the two sides as time expired.
Order was restored after about 10 minutes and in the end it really won't be the melee that folks will remember about BC's season-ending loss. It'll be how the Renegades went from practically scoring at will in the first half, building a 35-21 lead, to a team that played fast and loose with the football and asked way too much from its defense in the second half.
"This one hurt, yeah, but I'm, used to it," said defensive back Dustin Bell, who was around last season when BC came up short in the SoCal championship. "But I don't think some of the guys took it so well."
Mt. SAC (10-2) advances to play City College of San Francisco for the state championship next Saturday in Fresno. BC, 12-1, fell one win shy of setting a single season record.
Bell watched it all unravel from the sideline after separating his shoulder early in the third quarter.
"The first half our offense was doing what they've been doing all year, but (Mt. SAC) made some great adjustments and they came out ready to play," he said. "They were just the better team and they beat us."
BC quarterback Jacob Bower threw four touchdown passes in the first half, but was intercepted five times in the second half. At one point he threw picks on four consecutive pass attempts. The third-team All-American came into the game having thrown only eight interceptions all season.
"It's definitely uncharacteristic of him, but we've won a lot of football games with Jacob," BC coach Jeff Chudy said. "He's a winner and we wouldn't have gotten to where we were without him."
The turnovers came 2, 6, 2, 1, 2 and 2 plays into BC's second half possessions. The Mounties scored just 13 points directly off the six turnovers, but garnered a huge field position advantage because of them, enhanced even more by the punting of Ricky Parkhouse.
Even with all that, the Renegades had a chance to pull off a miracle win.
Mt. SAC scored its 13 points -- two field goals and a touchdown -- off a fumble and two interceptions over a span of 2 minutes, 56 seconds, to go from trailing 35-34 to leading 47-35 with 8:17 remaining in the fourth quarter.
Pinned back at its 4-yard-line with 4 minutes to play, BC got six of it back in a hurry. Bower tossed a quick out to Brandon Banks, who made a move at the 10, another one downfield near midfield and raced 96 yards for the touchdown to pull the Renegades to within five. Banks caught three of Bower's four first half TD passes and totalled 196 yards receiving on six catches.
On the ensuing on-sides kick, Banks was again on the receiving end, but this time diving full-out to grab the skidding ball at the BC 43. But the Renegades couldn't move it, nor could they move it from their 10 after getting it back one more time with a minute left and no timeouts.
"Our defense has been much maligned lately and they had us on our heels in the first half, but our guys showed character and resiliency," Chudy said. "The fact that the game came down to the last series considering everything else, that says a lot. We hung in there. It could have been a blowout.
"I'm proud of our players, I thought they fought hard. It just didn't come out our way."
Normally a meaningless statistic, the time of possession difference was glaring and telling -- four seconds shy of 40 minutes for Mt. SAC compared to 20 minutes, 4 seconds for BC. The Mounties ran 98 plays -- 50 on the ground, which may have represented the biggest upset of the night -- to BC's 52.
Attacking the BC defense with short outs and hitches, Mt. SAC first team All-America quarterback Kevin Craft threw for 288 yards, completing 27 of 48 attempts, and Jeremy Gener connected on field goals of 26, 34, 31, and 46 yards.
"It's a grind in the south having to play four playoff games to win state," Chudy said. "We just haven't figured out how to get it done. But we had a great year. We had nine home games and I think we made an imprint on some of the elementary kids we visited. I'm proud of our team."