Defense wins bowl battle

By: Terry Horstman

Posted: 1/6/09

Chalk up another bowl victory for Mike Riley and the Oregon State Beavers. In the Sun Bowl against the Pittsburgh Panthers, the Beavers won a defensive battle with a score of 3-0. The win improved Coach Riley's record in bowl games at OSU to 5-0 and helped the Pac-10 to reach a 5-0 record in bowl games this year.

Traditional football fans say this game was ugly with the way both offenses tried to move the ball down the field; this seems to be a very fair statement. However, if you read between the lines in this game, you would have seen one of the best defensive performances in football this year.

Pittsburgh running back LeSean McCoy was held to a meager 85 yards averaging just 3.5 yards per carry. Going into this game, McCoy was thought of as one of the best backs in the nation with 21 touchdowns and 1488 yards on the season, but the Beaver defense came out angry and proved that they still knew how to play after giving up nearly 700 yards in the Civil War.

Victor Butler turned in possibly his best performance as a Beaver in his last game with 11 tackles, 4 sacks and 4 hurries. Most importantly, he forced and recovered a fumble in the fourth quarter after Pittsburgh moved into Beaver territory and halted one of the Panthers very few successful drives of the afternoon.

"I said I want to be the guy to make a play," Butler told beaverfootball.com after the game. "I didn't know if anybody was around to scoop it, and we couldn't give them the ball there."

It was the perfect performance to cap off another great season for Victor Butler. Fellow senior and Butler's partner in crime, Slade Norris, also got in on the action, registering 1.5 sacks which brought Norris to 10.5 sacks on the season. When teamed with Butler, the duo - players once thought of as undersized defensive lineman - came up with 23 sacks giving offensive coordinators and quarterbacks headaches all season.

Butler and Norris were spectacular, but every member of the Beaver defense had their moment in the Sun Bowl. Senior cornerback Keenan Lewis set the tone early as he came up with his 4th interception of the year on the Panther's 2nd play from scrimmage. Lewis, a starter since his sophomore year, started in his 47th game - the 3rd most in school history.

Sophomore defensive tackle Stephen Paea didn't show up in the box score much, but play after play, Paea was able to penetrate the Pittsburgh offensive line and clog up any hole the Panthers attempted to make for their star running back.

The veteran secondary of the Beavers was key in keeping the goose egg on the board. It didn't matter who was in at quarterback for the Panthers; they were only able to complete 9 out of 28 passes for a dismal 2.7 yards per play.

Going into the Sun Bowl, Pittsburgh was averaging 356 yards and 29 points per game; the Panthers had not scored less than 17 in any game this year. Yet, the Oregon State defensive coordinator, Mark Banker, and the Beaver defense set a new low for the high-scoring Pittsburgh offense in every category.

It may not have been the game Beaver fans hoped to see, but a win is a win and the way the seniors played deserves to be remembered as some of the best in the history of OSU football. That's why the Sun Bowl may have been our team's best performance of the year; no other win this season solidified what Oregon State football is about - defense, character, and getting the job done no matter how many players are on the injured list and no matter how terrible the broadcasters for CBS may be.

Terry Horstman, sports writer

sports@dailybarometer.com