Las Vegas Bowl Recap

BYU 44, Oregon State 20

After such a delightful and inspiring regular season, a football feast that thrilled and encouraged their fan base, the Oregon State Beavers finally let down their guard and revealed their vulnerability.

A program that has normally won bowl games in the past decade, and which has typically overachieved in the Pac-10, finally produced a clunker in a meaningful situation. The school that won the 2008 Sun Bowl... and the 2007 Emerald Bowl... and the 2006 Sun Bowl... and the 2004 Insight Bowl... and the 2003 Las Vegas Bowl... and the 2001 Fiesta Bowl could not live up to its esteemed postseason reputation. The Beavers are normally a bunch of steady Eddies, but on this terrible, wind-blown Tuesday night at Sam Boyd Stadium in chilly Las Vegas, Coach Mike Riley's roster had no answers in the 2009 Las Vegas Bowl.

Oregon State drew first blood against the Cougars of Brigham Young University, using a short field to snag a 7-0 advantage with 8:46 left in the first quarter on a 1-yard sneak by quarterback Sean Canfield. At the very least, the Beavers and their fans had a right to expect a competitive contest at that point, but as the next three quarters would show, this showdown between the second-place teams in the Pac-10 and Mountain West Conferences would be decided long before the final gun.

The Cougars did all the shooting, and the Beavers meekly left the Southwest in a state of utter disarray.

Oregon State - throughout this decade and especially in the Riley era - has consistently provided great effort, even on days when nothing seemed to work. This debacle in the desert of Southern Nevada marked a distinct and alarming exception.

There's just no way to get around this statement, intellectually or emotionally: Had Oregon State been playing the Ohio State Buckeyes on January 1, 2010, in a place called Pasadena, the Beavers would not have been as disjointed as they were against BYU.

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The flood of dropped passes - particularly on the part of tight end Joe Halahuni - did not represent the personality Oregon State has brought to the gridiron in recent seasons. The inaccurate throws by Canfield - who completed just 20 of 41 passes without a touchdown - weren't consistent with the quarterback whose star shone so brightly in Corvallis over the previous three months. A number of brain-dead penalties - especially a flag on a muffed BYU punt which OSU recovered at the Cougar 8 in the final minutes of the first quarter - revealed a lack of focus and discipline that OSU fans simply don't expect to see.

You can try to deny it or wish it away, but the truth of the matter won't change: This was a body-snatched bunch of Beavers, a team that was still lamenting its four-point loss to Oregon on Dec. 3. Had Oregon State reached the big stage on New Year's Day against the Big Ten champions from Columbus, Ohio, the mopey and meek body language exhibited by the Beavers simply wouldn't have existed. BYU was playing in its fifth straight Las Vegas Bowl, but the amped-up Cougars were glad to be in Sin City. The Beavers wished they were at home in Corvallis, three days before boarding a plane to Southern California for a January 1 showdown.

That's the simple reason why BYU thrived and Oregon State lost on Tuesday: One team gave a darn, and one team didn't.

Attitude often decides bowl games - often in confounding ways - and the 2009 Las Vegas Bowl proved to be yet another example of how the minds of young men trumped a pure comparison of talent. Oregon State flashed some fine form in its first 12 games, but in contest number 13, the Beavers' brains spun sideways. Remember the terrific 8-4 regular season; the Vegas Bowl fiasco was certainly a forgettable occasion for the Oregon State football team.

By: Scott Dryden
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer