Daniels Runs Over Tulsa for 307 Yards

P.J. Daniels ran for 307 yards, the second-highest total in Georgia Tech history, and the Yellow Jackets salvaged their seventh consecutive winning season Saturday by routing Tulsa, 52-10, in the Humanitarian Bowl.

“I feed off of negative energy, man, because I’m a positive person,” said Daniels, who scored four touchdowns. “A couple of fans gave me some encouraging, negative words. I feed off of that.”

Daniels’ yardage total is second only to Eddie Lee Ivery’s 356 yards against Air Force in 1978.

The Yellow Jackets (7-6) haven’t had a losing season since going 5-6 in 1996. Tech faced suggestions that perhaps it didn’t deserve to be in a bowl, even the distant outpost of the Humanitarian Bowl.

Not many could say that after Saturday.

“A lot of people doubted us,” Daniels said. “They didn’t think we were going to make it to a bowl game. We proved a lot of people wrong, so I feel good and I know my teammates do, too.”

Tulsa (8-5) closed the regular season on a five-game winning streak for the school’s first bowl berth since 1991, but Saturday’s appearance was hardly memorable. The Golden Hurricane didn’t score a touchdown until the fourth quarter and finished with 144 total yards -- less than half of Daniels’ yardage. They were sacked seven times and held to minus-56 yards rushing.

“We had a great season. We didn’t have a great day,” first-year Tulsa Coach Steve Kragthorpe said.

A few inches of overnight snow remained beneath the aluminum seats in Bronco Stadium and small drifts and piles had been swept from the blue artificial turf to the sidelines. The temperature at kickoff was 20 degrees and it didn’t get much warmer, even after the sun broke through the clouds at halftime.

But the weather did nothing to cool off Daniels, a sophomore who earned a scholarship after last season.

“I had never played in the snow, but I enjoy it. I believe I’m ready for all kinds of weather,” he said.

Tech’s previous rushing high in a bowl game was 199 yards by Eddie Prokop in the 1944 Sugar Bowl, a 20-18 victory over Tulsa. Daniels had 104 yards at halftime, broke Prokop’s record early in the third quarter and kept going. He scored on runs of nine, one, 33 and 38 yards.

Daniels already was second on Tech’s rushing list for a game with 240 yards against North Carolina on Nov. 15.

“The players came to me and said, ‘Let’s try to get P.J. 300,’ ” Tech Coach Chan Gailey said. “I didn’t realize it to be honest with you. I had no clue. When they said that we were within about 10 or 12 yards of it, so I said, ‘Sure, we’ll try to do that.’ ”

Tech recovered six Tulsa fumbles, scored six touchdowns in the second half and broke the school bowl record for points set in a 45-21 victory over Nebraska in the 1991 Florida Citrus Bowl.

With the victory, Atlantic Coast Conference teams went 5-1 in bowl games. League champion Florida State, which lost Thursday to Miami, 16-14, was the only ACC team to lose.

Even without the draw of hometown favorite Boise State, which went to the Fort Worth Bowl instead of staying in town for the second consecutive year, the stadium was about two-thirds full with 23,118 fans.

Most of the crowd was cheering for Tulsa, which finished tied for second behind Boise State in the Western Athletic Conference, but there wasn’t much to celebrate. “When we were down 10-3 at halftime, we thought it was manageable,” Kragthorpe said. “But in the second half, we made errors and allowed them a shorter field.”