Wyoming Edges Furman 20-14
Laramie, Wy. -- Jarvis Wallum booted four field goals, including two in the second half, to lift the Wyoming Cowboys to a 20-14 season opening win over the visiting Furman Paladins in front of 14,167 fans at War Memorial Stadium on Saturday.
In posting the victory, Wyoming (1-0), an NCAA I-A member of the Mountain West Conference, snapped an eight-game losing streak dating back to the 2000 season. The loss was the second for Furman (0-1), ranked sixth in NCAA I-AA, in its last three season openers.
"It was awful nice to get our first victory," said Cowboy head coach Vic Koenning. "It was kind of hard to remember how to go about winning, and that's sad to say, especially around here. They (Furman) played smart and made good use of their players. They did a lot of things we expected them to do. They were good, and we¹ve said that all along."
"We had a chance to win the game and felt like we could have won it, but we didn¹t make plays when we had to make them," said Furman head coach Bobby Johnson. "They gave us a different look (on defense) than anything we had seen on last year's film, and it took us a while to decipher it and decide exactly what we wanted to run. Until we did that, we struggled a bit, and our turnovers hurt."
Trailing 14-7 at halftime, Furman tied the score at 14-14 when tailback Louis Ivory, the reigning Walter Payton Award winner in NCAA I-AA, broke loose on a 44-yard touchdown run with 3:23 left in the third quarter. Wyoming, however, answered on its next possession by moving 75 yards in 10 plays to set up Wallum's third field goal of the game, from 22-yards, to give the Cowboys a 17-14 advantage with less than a minute remaining in the third period.
Wallum added his fourth field goal of the contest, a 28-yarder, with 10:00 to go in the contest to stretch the Cowboys' lead to 20-14. On the ensuing possession, Furman drove from its own 35 to the Wyoming 7, where, on a third and four play, Paladin wide receiver Bear Rinehart was tackled for a three-yard loss on a reverse. Instead of kicking the field goal, Furman went for a touchdown, but quarterback Billy Napier's pass to a slanting and open Rinehart in the end zone fell low and incomplete.
Taking over possession with 6:10 remaining, Wyoming ground up the game clock by moving 73 yards in 12 plays to the Furman 17, where Wallum missed a 34-yard field goal attempt with only 17 seconds left in the game.
The Cowboys, who racked up 87 offensive plays to Furman's 58, amassed 422 yards in offense and were paced by sophomore quarterback Casey Bramlet, who completed 30-of-48 passes for 331 yards. Bramlet, who scored Wyoming¹s lone touchdown of the game on a 1-yard run in the second quarter that gave the Cowboys a 14-7 lead, connected with sophomore wide receiver Ryan McGuffey on 10 passes for 134 yards.
Furman was paced offensively by Ivory, who rushed 19 times for 136 yards and one touchdown. Ivory, who ran for an NCAA I-AA best 2,079 yards and 16 touchdowns in 2000, recorded the 20th 100-yard game of his career.
Furman netted 349 yards in offense, including 169 from quarterback Billy Napier, who completed 12-of-24 passes in the contest. Bear Rinehart paced all Paladin receivers with four receptions for 97 yards.
Furman returns to action next Saturday when it entertains Elon at Paladin Stadium in a 7:00 p.m. game.