Champs Sports Bowl: MD wins T.O.P. battle

By Robert Rousseau  |   Tuesday, January 02, 2007  |  Comments( 0 )

College Football
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Coming into the Champs Sports Bowl, the Maryland Terrapins knew two things: First, they wanted to keep the Purdue Boilermakers' 10th-ranked passing offense led by quarterback Curtis Painter (3,721 yards passing) off the field. In doing so, they wanted to win the time of possession battle. Second, they wanted to accomplish that by running the ball successfully on the Boilermakers' 112th-ranked rushing defense that had allowed 190 yards on the ground per game in 2006.

They did both, and that led to a rather easy 24-7 victory. It was truly a team effort.

Maryland's Lance Ball rushed for 98 yards, while Keon Lattimore added 86 of his own. That allowed Terrapins quarterback Sam Hollenbach to have a big day as well, completing 15-of-24 passes for 223 yards and two touchdowns.

Taken together, Maryland held the ball for 39:48 of the game's 60 minutes. It was a big change from the way the team had ended its 2006 regular season. The Terrapins, still in the thick of things for the conference championship late in the season, had lost their final two regular-season games by a combined 76-40 score.

Throughout the game Purdue seemed hardly able to do anything with the ball when the team had it. The Boilers managed only managed 21 total yards rushing and didn't score a point in the entire second half.

"I think oftentimes we look at ourselves and try to beat ourselves up some, when the reality of it was Maryland did a nice job of running the ball and controlling the ball and controlling the clock," Purdue head coach Joe Tiller said after the game.

That seems to sum it up nicely.
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About Robert Rousseau

Robert Rousseau is a sports writer that has been published in a variety of print and online venues. He’s been writing for RealFootball365.com for almost three years now. When Rousseau isn’t writing about college football he tends to be penning mixed martial arts pieces for MMAFighting.com or...
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