Playing Ugly, Titans Hang On to Defeat San Jose State for 1st Win of Year, 20-18

This game may have been long (almost four hours) and hot (91 degrees at kickoff). And maybe it was poorly played, not exactly the kind of game you’d choose to showcase your program on national television.

But at this point in the season, Cal State Fullerton Coach Gene Murphy would spend a week in sauna watching his team make mistakes if it meant a win.

Murphy got it Thursday night at Spartan Stadium as the Titans struggled to their first victory, a 20-18 Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. decision over San Jose State in front of 12,126 and a ESPN audience.

Fullerton is 1-3 overall but 1-0 in conference. San Jose is 1-4 overall and 1-2 in the PCAA.

“It may have been ugly to you, but it was beautiful to us,” Murphy said. “They fumbled eight times and we only got one. And we dropped about four passes we could’ve intercepted. The scoreboard might have gone the other way, but it wasn’t sloppy because we won.”

Murphy, who used every trick play in the books during his first years at Fullerton when the Titans seldom won, re-introduced the offense he fondly calls “the squirrel derby” Thursday night, and the Titans scored two touchdowns on razzle-dazzle plays.

Fullerton scored its first touchdown on a 60-yard pass from holder/receiver Todd White, who lined up at tailback, took a handoff and threw a perfect pass to a wide-open Corn Redick.

And the Titans second touchdown came on a 35-yard screen play from quarterback Kevin Jan to Redick, who started in one direction then circled back to take Jan’s lob behind the line of scrimmage before weaving his way to the end zone.

The game was in doubt until the final seconds, though, when safety Mike Romero intercepted a Jon Carlson pass with 26 seconds left to play.

“We finally got some offensive consistency,” said Jan, who completed 9 of 21 passes for 149 yards and two touchdowns. If anyone was watching ESPN instead of the Angels and Royals on Channel 5, they witnessed enough fumbles, near-fumbles, interceptions, near-interceptions, penalties, blocked kicks and general ineptness in the first 15 minutes of play to make a feature-length blooper film.

In fact, the first “score” came when Redick took Doug Allen’s punt near his 10 yard line and danced back into the end zone, where he was tackled by Brett Grauss for a safety. San Jose State put together the first bona fide drive of the game in the waning seconds of the first half. Doug Allen replaced Carlson at quarterback after Carlson went out with a minor throat injury.

Fullerton stopped the Spartans on third-and-one at the Titan 16, but they did it with 12 players and San Jose closed the gap to 14-9 with 29 seconds left before the intermission after Allen hit Kenny Nash with an 11-yard scoring pass.

San Jose took the lead five minutes into the second half on a bizarre play from the Titan 4. Fullback Mike Meredith prematurely broke toward the line of scrimmage, then stopped and threw up his hands in disgust with himself. A number of other Spartans appeared to jump, but there were no flags, so Meredith swung out into the flat where Allen hit him with touchdown pass.

Meredith looked stunned and so were the Titan coaches when the officials let the touchdown stand. Fullerton cornerback Mark Collins intercepted Allen’s pass on a two-point conversion try and San Jose led, 15-14.

The Fullerton offense showed a flicker of brilliance late in the third quarter when Jan hit split end Wade Lockett with a 35-yard bomb and then found him open in the corner of the end zone two plays later. The Titans’ two-point try also failed so Fullerton had a 20-15 advantage.

San Jose cut the Titan lead to 20-18 midway through the fourth quarter on Brown’s 31-yard field goal.