Matt Wagner
Staff Writer
Walking down the tunnel to the locker room, the Bobcats looked dejected. They had taken this walk before.
Ohio fell short in a close contest with Tennessee, 34-23. This is the third time in three years the Bobcat played into the fourth quarter with a Bowl Championship Series' conference opponent.
There was no moral victory for the Bobcats.
You can't count those
coach Frank Solich said. If you start settling for moral victories too much of that can come into play. We're trying to build the program to where we can finish these kind of games off and end up on the right side of it
Right now, to play it close is not a moral victory for us.
The Bobcats showed resiliency the entire game. After giving up a touchdown on Tennessee's opening drive Chris Garrett returned the following kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown.
Noah Keller intercepted a Jonathan Crompton pass five plays later to give Ohio great field position. The Bobcats capitalized when Scott rolled out of the pocket to find LaVon Brazill wide-open in the end zone. This gave Ohio a 14-7 lead with 7:08 remaining in the first quarter.
Down a touchdown with no timeouts remaining late in the 2nd
Ohio drove 45 yards to set up Matt Weller for a 36 yard field goal
cutting Tennessee's lead to four and making the score 21-17.
Ohio wouldn't go away even in the later part of the game. With Ohio down 11 early in the fourth
Ohio drove down the field to give Weller his third field goal of the game
this one from 31 yards. Ohio was still only down one score
31-23.
A (Southeastern Conference) school is a big time school, said wide reciever Taylor Price. We came out and hung with them all the way to the fourth quarter, made a lot of big plays and the defense hung in there. We got turnovers. We did everything we could to win the game.
The drive followed a Keller fumble-recovery for a touchdown that was called back because he was out of bounds. The touchdown would have put pressure on Tennessee.
Instead
it hurt Ohio's psyche.
It was kind of like an emotional roller coaster, Keller said. I definitely couldn't see it, so I couldn't tell if I was in or out. But I didn't see the ball sitting there. I just heard people yelling 'ball, ball, ball.'
However
the Volunteer running attack took over in the second half.
After Ohio held Tennessee to 45 yards rushing in the first half
Montario Hardesty broke through the Bobcat defense
