McNown Respected but Not Undefeated

Miami ended the day Saturday with an even higher regard for Cade McNown, who torched the Hurricanes for 513 passing yards and five touchdowns.

“He’s something special,” Williams said. “Cade McNown is a great quarterback, the best quarterback I’ve seen. If it wasn’t for him, we probably would’ve won the game easy. They probably can say the same thing about us with EJ [running back Edgerrin James].”

“He’s a great quarterback, very mobile, and it gets frustrating wrestling around with him out there,” said Hurricane defensive end Derrick Ham, who fruitlessly chased McNown without recording a sack.

“You think you’ve got him and then he ducks and dives away from you at the last second.”

McNown’s five scoring throws gave him 23 this season. He became the only player in school history to throw for more than 3,000 yards in two seasons.

He also ran for a one-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter, giving the Bruins a 45-35 lead.

“We dictated the momentum on offense. We rolled on them,” McNown said. “What today showed was our immaturity on defense.”

Did Miami quarterback Scott Covington, the Dana Hills High graduate, feel for McNown when the game was over?

“What’s funny about this game is you play long and hard and you go up and down the field and the game comes down to four seconds and one play,” said Covington, who threw for 318 yards and three touchdowns.

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James was winded, but he said he wasn’t allowing himself to think about it. Well, not too much about it.

“I was so tired,” the Miami junior running back said of his one relatively sustained break in the third quarter, during his 39-carry, 299-yard performance.

“But before the game I told myself I wasn’t going to get tired. I didn’t want to be able to walk off this field when the game was over, I wanted to give everything.”

He gave enough--in addition to his single-game records, James established a Miami record for yards in a season (1,416); his three running touchdowns gave him a school-record 17.

His carries tied Ottis Anderson, who carried 39 times against Florida in 1978.

“I thought poor James was going to die from exhaustion,” UCLA Coach Bob Toledo said, dripping with sarcasm. “I was starting to feel sorry for him.”

Said Miami fullback Nick Williams: “Oh, yeah, he was tired. . . . Any man who carries the ball 37 times is going to be tired. But he knew he had to carry the load today. Everybody knew he had to do it. And he kept going and we just fed off of him, it flowed through him.”

James is considering giving up his senior season for the NFL, saying Saturday, “I only want to make the best decision for me.”

Said Williams, a senior: “I don’t want to get into that. He’ll decide what’s best. I just hope he plays with me. On Sundays.”