Aztecs Should Blush, Not Gush, After Struggle

You went to grab an early dinner and service was slow? You missed the first quarter?

No problem, so did San Diego State’s football team.

Your kid took off with the car keys and the bus you took had a flat tire? You missed the first half?

No problem, so did San Diego State’s football team.

The boss made you work on Saturday and then kept you two extra hours? You missed the first three quarters?

No problem, so did San Diego State’s football team.

Yes, it won. It beat Texas El Paso. The score was 49-27.

You don’t brag on beating UTEP 49-27. Not at all. This was a picture you’d hang in the garage or a fish you’d throw back or a tie you’d bury in a drawer. You hope no one realizes or notices you had anything to do with anything as ugly as this 49-27 victory over UTEP.

You see, UTEP was very much in the game at the start of that fourth quarter, when SDSU finally got off the bus. The score was 27-21. Whisper that. Maybe nobody back east will notice.

The Aztecs have to be thankful that this game was not on television. It would have been like going on the Tonight Show with their flies unzipped.

You play UTEP and you expect a laugher. You figure the starters to be out by midway through the second quarter, halftime at the latest. Guys who haven’t met a grass stain all year should play most of the second half.

UTEP, after all, was--and still is--winless this year. There have been decades when UTEP was winless, or at least it seemed like it. SDSU had to look at its schedule and conclude it had two byes in a row, last week when it didn’t play anybody and Saturday night when it didn’t play anybody.

This was not a game the Aztecs were ever really in danger of losing. It’s just that it was so much of a struggle. The Al-O-Meter, whatever that might be, supposedly measured Al Luginbill as having paced 16,061 yards during this game. That’s one of the most telling statistics of the night. He should have been able to coach this one from an easy chair.

I’ll tell you how out of whack this one was. Some guy named Marshall Young, from UTEP, naturally, scored before Marshall Faulk did. Young was UTEP’s kicker and he scored on a 47-yard field goal midway through the second period. The real Marshall did not score until the opening minute of the fourth quarter.

Indeed, Faulk himself probably would prefer that clips from this one be omitted from any Heisman-touting highlight film. He got his 156 yards, but his was a bit of a struggle, too. He carried 30 times and the longest gain, 21 yards, came on his final carry.

Faulk probably could have run farther and faster through a Louisiana bayou than he managed through the UTEP defense in that first quarter. He carried eight times for 19 yards. He was thrown for losses three times and stopped for no gain on another. He came into the game averaging 7.6 yards a carry and didn’t get up over four a carry until the second half.

UTEP was much more miserable than that. It had a total offense of one yard with one first down and one completed pass in the first period. The passing was so bad it was almost impossible to identify whom the intended receivers might have been.

You looked at how badly UTEP was playing and how inept it was offensively, and you had to figure the blowout would come swiftly and surely.

And it never really did.

In fact, this game’s Heisman Trophy candidate--if such “honors” were bestowed on a game-by-game basis--would have been wide receiver Darnay Scott. This one was a personal highlight film for him, akin to what he did against Brigham Young in last year’s 52-52 tie.

If UTEP was going to hound and pound Faulk like it did, someone had to be open and running free.

That someone was Scott. He caught 12 passes for 274 yards and three touchdowns of 71, 50 and 42 yards. All were those lofted beauties launched by David Lowery, who was 19 for 34 for 372 yards and four touchdowns.

Try as it did, UTEP couldn’t cover Scott with a tarp the size of Texas. He might have scored five touchdowns but for a couple of passes he dropped in the open. It took him only two plays to get that first touchdown, that 71-yarder, and the Aztecs’ first play from scrimmage was an eight-yard pass to him.

It was his night.

That was good, because no one else really had one.

The irony was that it really turned out to be a rather upbeat night all the way around, because Utah went down to New Mexico and absorbed a 24-7 upset loss. This left the Aztecs with clear sailing to the Holiday Bowl . . . if they can win their five remaining Western Athletic Conference games.

Believe me, Saturday night was not a night to be celebrating the notion that anything is going to be easy.

You struggle like that against UTEP and you put on dark glasses and a hat with a low brim and try to sneak out the back door.