Tulane scores 16 late points, beats USC 46-45 in Cotton Bowl

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ARLINGTON, Texas — Alex Bauman knew right away he had scored probably the biggest touchdown in Tulane history, even after the true freshman tight end’s contested 6-yard catch at the end of the Cotton Bowl was initially ruled incomplete.

“I kept my hands under the ball,” he said.

The long replay review proved Bauman made the catch with 9 seconds left, even with linebacker Eric Gentry draped over him as they rolled over in the end zone. That capped a frantic finish for the 14th-ranked Green Wave in a 46-45 win over Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams and No. 8 Southern California.

“I might have had a heart attack,” Tulane coach Willie Fritz said on the field moments after the game ended.

“If you told us before the game that we had one drive, one opportunity to go down there and win the game, then we’d take that 10 out of 10 times,” quarterback Michael Pratt said.

The Green Wave (12-2) scored 16 points in the final 4:07, the game-winning touchdown coming after they got the ball back following a safety, to complete an FBS-record 10-win turnaround after going 2-10 last season.

“Huge win for the program, huge win for the university, huge win for the city,” Fritz said.

Williams was 37-for-52 passing for 462 yards and a Cotton Bowl-record five touchdowns, exactly one month after suffering a hamstring injury in USC’s loss to Utah in the Pac-12 championship game that kept the Trojans (11-3) from making the four-team College Football Playoff.

Tyjae Spears ran for 205 yards, his FBS-best eighth consecutive 100-yard game. His career-best fourth touchdown started the final scoring surge for American Athletic Conference champion Tulane, which was in the New Year’s Six game as the highest-ranked Group of Five team.

The Green Wave played in their most significant bowl since the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day in 1940, when they were still in the Southeastern Conference, and it was their biggest bowl win since the 1935 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, where their campus is located.

After Spears’ 4-yard TD run with 4:07 left, the Green Wave opted to kick deep instead of trying an onside kick. Mario Williams signaled for a fair catch, but fumbled the ball out of bounds at the 1. Two plays later, defensive tackle Patrick Jenkins met Austin Jones in the end zone and smothered him for a safety.

“We were debating whether or not to onside kick,” said Fritz, the seventh-year Tulane coach. “Obviously it was great that we got it on the 1 and got the safety.”

Pratt completed only 8 of 17 passes for 234 yards, but had two 24-yard completions on that final drive after the safety. He also scrambled 8 yards on a fourth-and-6 play.

The first 24-yard completion to Bauman converted a fourth-and-10. Deuce Watts then held on despite a crushing hit from a defender that left both of them on the ground after a 24-yard gain to the 6 with 18 seconds left.

After Williams followed coach Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma, the Trojans matched the biggest turnaround in school history despite the coach’s first loss in six games at AT&T Stadium. Their debut was a seven-win improvement over last season’s 4-8 record.

“I’ve rarely at the end of the year felt so conflicted,” Riley said. “On one hand, sick about the way we finished the season. … We lost three games this year. We lost two of them on the last play of the game. And we lost one in the fourth quarter in the championship game when we had a chance to go to the College Football Playoff.”

The Trojans never trailed until that final touchdown. Williams threw TD passes on each of their first two possessions. A 9-yarder to Michael Jackson III capped the game-opening 9-minute drive, the longest by time for USC this season, and Terrell Bynum‘s 3-yard catch capped a 95-yard drive early to make it 14-0 in the second quarter.

Tulane tied the game at 14 on Pratt’s touchdown pass to Jha'Quan Jackson, an 87-yard catch-and-run. But USC scored twice in the final 2:21 of the first half, on Raleek Brown‘s 39-yard run and Brenden Rice‘s 4-yard catch with 12 seconds left.

Rice, the son of Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice, had career bests with six catches for 174 yards and two touchdowns. Tahj Washington had five catches for 109 yards.

Williams got hurt on a 59-yard run early in the Pac-12 championship game loss to Utah on Dec. 2, but still threw for 363 yards and three TDs while finishing that game. USC’s only other loss was also to the Utes, who had a game-winning 2-point conversion at home in mid-October.

The Cotton Bowl was Williams’ third game this season with five TD passes. His only interception set up Tulane’s long game-tying TD. On a scramble with open field in front of him, Williams instead threw off his back foot and was picked off by Jarius Monroe.

“It’s going to linger. You lose the last game of the season, go into the offseason, burns,” Williams said. “Don’t have another game after. It’s going to burn.”

GOING LONG

There were 11 plays of at least 30 yards – six by Tulane (two passes and four runs) and five by USC (four passes, one run). The 87-yard catch-and-run by Jackson for the Green Wave matched the longest touchdown in the 87 Cotton Bowl games played.

UP NEXT

Tulane opens next fall with back-to-back home games, Sept. 2 against South Alabama and Sept. 9 against SEC team Ole Miss.

USC gets an early start to Riley’s second season, Aug. 26 at home against San Jose State.

Tulane’s Pratt, Spears last game together in Cotton Bowl vs. USC

Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports
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ARLINGTON, Texas – There was plenty of speculation about Michael Pratt‘s future and whether the Tulane quarterback who drew interest from Power Five schools ever really considered going into the transfer portal after the Green Wave landed a spot in the Cotton Bowl.

“When you have success, opportunities present themselves, but I wouldn’t say it was super tempting because this is my squad,” Pratt, the third-year starter, said without offering specifics. “These are my guys, and the coaches that recruited me into the culture and everything, coach (Willie) Fritz.”

Pratt has already said he is coming back for his senior season, and physical running back Tyjae Spears stayed for one last game before the NFL prospect heads to the Senior Bowl. The explosive runner said he never considered opting out Tulane’s most significant bowl game in decades.

“Man, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” Spears said of the bowl that comes a season after Tulane went 2-10.

“I think it goes to show the brotherhood we’ve built and family, and not wanting to walk out on each other,” said center Sincere Haynesworth, one of the team captains. “Just the biggest game Tulane has had in a long time, and it just goes to show what we’ve put behind us and how much we all care about this and how bad we want that.”

The American Athletic Conference champion Green Wave play Southern California on Monday in a matchup of 11-2 teams at the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. Their nine-win improvement has already matched an FBS record.

Tulane, which played in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day 1940, finished as this season’s highest-ranked Group of Five team (16th in the final College Football Playoff rankings). A 45-28 win over UCF in the AAC championship game avenged its only loss since September.

Pratt had 442 total yards and five touchdowns in the title game. Spears rushed for 199 yards with a 60-yard TD, which included a leap over a tripped-up teammate, while extending his FBS-best active to streak to seven 100-yard games in a row.

“We’re really fortunate on offense because our best players are our best leaders,” first-year Tulane offensive coordinator Jim Svoboda said. “Those are two of them.”

Pratt has thrown for 2,776 yards with 25 touchdowns and five interceptions this season. He has had only two passes picked off over the past eight games.

The quarterback from Florida started Tulane’s final nine games in 2020, when he threw for 1,806 yards and his 20 TD passes were the most nationally by a true freshman. He has thrown a touchdown in all but one of his 33 career games, including the first 17.

In the Green Wave’s 2021 season opener against Oklahoma, which was moved to Norman from the Tulane campus because of Hurricane Ida, Pratt completed 27 of 44 passes for 296 yards and three touchdowns. The Sooners’ defensive coordinator then was Alex Grinch, who went with Lincoln Riley to USC after that season.

“Tough competitor. I think he has anticipation skills, in terms of throwing the football. Willing to stand in the pocket versus some pressure situations,” Grinch said of Pratt. “Nothing but impressed. That looked like probably a championship football team that maybe was on the brink. It’s easy to say now, connecting the dots that way. But certainly you saw evidence of that. And you got a quarterback, you got a shot. And they certainly have one.”

That was Spears’ first game back from an ACL injury that cut short his sophomore year. He had only six carries for 20 yards and caught three passes for six yards against the Sooners, but did go on to run for 863 yards that season.

After being limited last spring by a pulled hamstring, and still rusty early this season, Spears broke through to become the first non-quarterback named the AAC’s offensive player of the year. He has 1,064 yards rushing over the past seven games while averaging 7.8 yards per carry.

“I’m having more fun than I’ve had before,” Spears said.

“He’s an awesome dude,” Pratt said. “He comes to practice every single day going 110 percent. His attitude and effort every day, he’s super consistent. There’s never a day that he’s not the same guy.”

Pratt accounts for 5 TDs, Tulane tops UCF 45-28 to win AAC

Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports
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NEW ORLEANS – As Tulane receiver Shae Wyatt watched jubilant fans streaming onto the field, he couldn’t help but reflect upon how far his team had come since finishing last season 2-10.

“It’s definitely surreal,” said Wyatt, whose two touchdown catches were no small part of why a celebratory scene so hard to conceive of a year ago was unfolding around him. “Seeing all the other schools with their success, and having their fans storm the field – eventually, everybody wants that.”

Michael Pratt accounted for 442 total yards and five touchdowns, Tyjae Spears highlighted his 199 yards rushing with a 60-yard score and No. 18 Tulane beat No. 22 UCF 45-28 on Saturday night in the American Athletic Conference championship game.

The victory virtually assured Tulane (11-2) would play in the Cotton Bowl – its first major New Year’s Day bowl since the 1939 season.

A full hour after the game, Tulane players were still in uniform, walking back to the field from the locker room to pose for photos with teammates, some with cigars in hand. Spears joked that his elbow was sore from fans pulling on him for a congratulatory embrace.

“It was an amazing feeling, man,” Spears said. “That’s something that will stick with us for the rest of our life.”

And Wyatt suggested that Tulane’s remarkable turnaround should serve as a lesson.

“They were just throwing dirt over us and for a while it was hard to bounce back,” Wyatt said of last season, during which Tulane was displaced by Hurricane Ida to a Birmingham hotel for a month, and plagued with injuries to prominent players.

“If you keep your faith and you believe in your brothers that are next to you, flowers will grow. I promise you,” Wyatt said. “I hope this is a testament to anybody out there.”

Pratt passed for a career-high 394 yards, including touchdowns of 73 yards to Duece Watts, 60 and 10 yards to Wyatt and 43 yards to Lawrence Keys. Pratt also ran for a pivotal 18-yard touchdown with 4:04 left.

“It was awesome to close out that game and have those fans so fired up,” said Pratt, named the game’s most outstanding player.

Spears electrified the record crowd of 30,118 at Tulane’s cozy, on-campus Yulman Stadium with his long scoring run, on which he broke two tackles near the line of scrimmage, made two other defenders miss and hurndled his own fallen teammate after cutting back inside.

The Green Wave, which earned the right to host the title game by ending Cincinnati’s 32-game home winning streak last weekend, avenged a 38-31 regular-season loss to UCF (9-4) on the same field on Nov. 12.

But UCF was not quite the same team because of QB John Rhys Plumlee‘s nagging hamstring injury, which appeared to rob him of the explosiveness he displayed by running for 176 yards in the previous meeting.

Plumlee struggled enough early on that coach Gus Malzahn pulled him in the second quarter in favor of Thomas Castellanos. But with Tulane up 24-7 in the middle of the third quarter, Malzahn put Plumlee back in as primarily a passer – and he nearly led the Kights all the way back.

“He’s one of the toughest players I think I’ve ever coached,” Malzahn said. “John Rhys just kept telling me, `Coach, give me another chance.’ … He really gave us a spark.”

Plumlee led UCF quickly for a touchdown to make it 24-14, converting a fourth-and-10 pass along the way and capping the drive with a 17-yarder to Kobe Hudson.

“You work all year to play in a game like this,” said Plumlee, who completed 29 of 39 for 209 yards and one TD, but finished with minus-7 yards rushing as Tulane had six sacks. “I didn’t want to sell myself short or sell this team short.”

Tulane responded when both UCF safeties froze on a play-fake to Spears and Pratt found Watts running free behind the defense.

UCF cut it to 31-21 when former Virginia QB RJ Harvey took a backward pass from Plumlee and launched a 49-yard TD pass to Hudson.

And the Knights got the ball right back when Spears fumbled after a catch on the Green Wave 30. Isaiah Bowser‘s 10-yard run shortly after got UCF as close as 31-28 with 9:48 still left.

But Pratt again found a way to lead the Wave down the field, connecting with Wyatt for the longer of the receiver’s two TDs, and UCF didn’t threaten again.

THE TAKEAWAY

UCF: Knights sophomore backup QB Mikey Keene, who had come in after Plumlee injuries for comeback victories over Cincinnati and South Florida, did not dress for the game. That allowed him to retain a year of eligibility, but also raised questions over whether he might test the transfer portal.

Tulane: It was a dream end to week that got off to a less-than-ideal start with reports out of Atlaata that head coach Willie Fritz being pursued by Georgia Tech.

“Well, I sure am glad I stayed,” Fritz said. “I made a commitment to these kids and the last thing I ever wanted to be was a distraction. So, I’m just proud to be here.”

UP NEXT

UCF: Awaits a bowl bid on Sunday.

Tulane: Heads to its most significant bowl appearance since losing 14-13 to Texas A&M in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, 1940.