Miami Shakes Off Rust and Takes Down Tulsa

It took second-ranked Miami one quarter to overcome rustiness from a 16-day layoff and a little more than six minutes to overwhelm Tulsa.

Gino Torretta threw two short touchdown passes, and Stephen McGuire scored one of his two touchdowns during a 6-minute 22-second span in the second quarter that broke open a scoreless game and sent the Hurricanes on their way to a 34-10 victory Saturday.

Miami (3-0) was playing its first game since a 40-10 victory over Houston and only its second in the past 28 days.

“I’ll take that win after 16 days off,” Miami Coach Dennis Erickson said. “It does hurt you when you haven’t played and you had all that momentum coming from that Houston game. But that’s over and done with now.”

It was over early for the Golden Hurricane (3-2). Tulsa needed a near-perfect game as it had a week earlier in a 35-34 upset of then-No. 15 Texas A&M.; Instead, Tulsa had two fumbles, an interception and had a shanked punt that went 10 yards in the first 20 minutes of the game.

Miami used the shanked punt to drive 52 yards, with McGuire scoring on an eight-yard run. Micheal Barrow recovered Fallon Wacasey’s second fumble of the game at the Tulsa 30, and Torretta capped the drive with a one-yard scoring pass to Carlos Etheredge.

Then Ryan O’Neil returned an interception 50 yards to the three, and Torretta passed to a wide-open Joe Moore on the next play.

Torretta completed 20 of 33 passes for 327 yards. Tulsa’s Chris Hughley rushed 30 times for 147 yards, the most against Miami since Sammie Smith of Florida State rushed for 189 yards in 30 carries in 1987.

“Playing a team like Miami, you can’t give them any help,” Tulsa Coach Dave Rader said.

“They didn’t whip up on us as much as we whipped up on ourselves.”