Army snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory Saturday afternoon.
Playing before a stunned crowd of 28,705 on Senior Day at Michie Stadium, the Black Knights managed to do just about everything wrong in the fourth quarter in their American Conference game with Tulsa. The result was three scores by the visiting Golden Hurricane in about 10 minutes, including a game-winning 27-yard field goal by kicker Seth Morgan with just 12 seconds left, to allow Tulsa to walk away with an improbable 26-25 victory.
The loss, which left Army at 5-5 overall and 3-4 in the American, put a severe dent in the team’s hopes of qualifying for one of the 41 postseason bowl games. The Black Knights must defeat UTSA on the road next Saturday in order to gain six wins on the season and become bowl eligible. The annual battle with Navy, Army’s last regular season game played on Dec. 13 in Baltimore, comes after the bowl bids are announced and it is extremely unlikely that any spots would remain open at that point. Tulsa (4-7 , 1-6 American) earned its first conference win of the season.
More maddening, the defeat continued an enigmatic campaign that has seen Army lose four games in the last minute of play, all by one touchdown or less, with two losses coming in overtime, and all coming when Army had a chance to clinch a victory.
“Well, to say I’m disappointed would be an understatement,” Army coach Jeff Monken said. “I’m disappointed for our entire team, certainly our (23) seniors, playing their last game here. They just outplayed us. We had a lead and tried to slow the game down and didn’t do that very well.
“Defensively they went up and down the field on us, almost 500 yards of offense, a back that rushed for 200 yards. We didn’t do a very good job on either side.”
The bottom line is that this one is going to sting for a long time. In fact, if anyone had left the game late in the third quarter, they would have probably assumed that Army had the contest in hand. The Black Knights took a 22-14 lead into halftime on three rushing touchdowns by junior quarterback Cale Hellums. Army extended the advantage to 25-14 when Dawson Jones hit a 33-yard field goal to cap a 15-play, 7:51 minute drive in the third quarter.
But, the Army team that went into the locker room at halftime was not the same team that came out for the second half. Besides the one scoring drive, and despite two Tulsa turnovers deep that Monken described as “opportune stops” in Black Knight territory in the second half, Army failed to mount any kind of offense the rest of the game.
The Black Knights last five drives of the game accounted for just 40 yards on 18 snaps. The Golden Hurricane, on the other hand, seemed to get stronger as the game went on.
Quarterback Baylor Hayes completed 20 of 31 passes for 267 yards and one touchdown. Running back Dominic Richardson ran for a career-high 203 yards, 126 in the second half, and a touchdown on 28 carries. In total, Tulsa had 497 offensive yards against 312 for Army.
“I think we did a really good job of running the ball and being efficient in the first half, and then in the second half they just got after us, and we didn’t play well,” said Hellums, who ran for 159 yards on 32 carries. “That’s the bottom line, right? They made plays on their defense and they held us to one to two yards rushing the ball, and that’s not acceptable.
“We hurt ourselves, and they had an answer coming into the second half and we didn’t respond well. We moved the ball good that first drive and after that we got stagnant. We didn’t really move the ball from there on out, and that’s on us, that’s on me; I’ve got to be better.”
After the two third-quarter drives that ended only because of the fumbles, Tulsa capped a 52-yard drive with a 48-yard Morgan field goal to cut Army’s lead to 25-17 about five minutes into the fourth quarter. Then, after a misguided second-down long pass attempt by Hellums to Brady Anderson into double coverage with two other receivers wide open resulted in an interception, the Golden Hurricane raced down the field in five plays for a touchdown to cut Army’s lead to 25-23. But a pass on the ensuing two-point conversion attempt sailed long out of the endzone.
Army recovered the onside kick on the Tulsa 46-yard line with just 1:54 left in the game. But, the Golden Hurricane utilized its last two timeouts and took advantage of an Army run that ended out of bounds to stop the clock to get the ball back when Hellums was stopped short on a 4th-and-3 run with 1:35 left in the game.
“I thought about (punting on the fourth down play),” Monken said. “But we weren’t doing a very good job of stopping them. They were taking the ball up and down the field on us. So even if we punt, there’s enough time for them to drive down the field and kick a field goal. If we make the first down there, which I thought we had a good call and really if he kind of bounces around that block and gets a first down, the game is over. We can end the game on that play.”
Nine plays and 1:26 seconds later, Morgan hit his winning field goal.
“Obviously we pride ourselves on winning the fourth quarter, and bottom line, we didn’t do that,” said senior co-captain and linebacker Andon Thomas. “I think a couple things went wrong, and I think honestly we got a little flat, if I’m being honest, and that’s on me. I should have been rallying the guys, picking them up. We had some guys with their heads down, and that’s on me to pick them up really, so I really take accountability for that.”
