Broncos Handle _yoming; Send Them Home Sans 'W'. Again.

Final Score: Boise State 23, _yoming, 13

ESPN.com

In front of a crowd announced to be 35, 454, and wearing the coolest black uniforms in all of football, the Broncos returned home looking for their first home win since the UTEP game way back on September 10th. Well, to the relief BSU fans everywhere, the Broncos were able to successfully buck the Cowboys and send them home with an ‘L’ yet again.

The game started strong with a seemingly-now-fully-healthy George Holani running roughshod over the _yoming defense. With nearly five minutes remaining in the second quarter, Holani was already at 92 yards. He would end the game with 102 as the offense cooled in the middle quarters, but his phenomenal early running helped mask the losses of Octavius Evans and Stefan Cobbs in the passing game. Neither of them suited up for the contest, however Riley Smith did his best to complement Shakir in the “catching passes” department, and was on the receiving end of Hank’s lone TD pass on a very efficient night for #19.

Despite the offense stagnating a bit after what was a very productive first quarter, they ended up getting 3 more points on the board as they headed in at the half. The 43 yard kick was good after Donald Pleasanc...er...Craig Bohl’s attempt to ‘thrice’ the kicker. Which, as we all know, is the totally normal behavior of using all three timeouts in an effort to ice the opposing kicker...which is exactly what he did. Or, rather, failed to ‘did’, because Dalmas was unfazed and nailed it anyway.

The Broncos pulled away in the second half, aided by another couple Dalmas kicks and the first interception of Demetri Washington’s life. He returned it 37 yards and Andrew Van Buren took it the remaining 12, to put the Broncos on top 20-7, with 7:39 left in the fourth quarter. It was AVB’s only carry in the game, but it certainly counted. Also, considering his stat line from the Fresno game, this means Van Buren has three touchdowns on his last four carries, making him the ULTIMATE touchdown vulture.

This was one of those weird games where Boise State seemed firmly in control the entire time, but they just failed to completely separate until they were up 23-7 in the 4th quarter. And, even then, the Cowboys caught the Bronco backups sleeping and scored a 74 yard “garbage time” touchdown with less than 10 seconds left in the game. They were probably frustrated with themselves, but likely not as much as some gamblers were with that last-ten-seconds back door cover. The Bronco defense otherwise played great in this one, as they have almost all year, only narrowly missing their sixth second half shutout in the last 10 outings.

The Broncos will be back in action next weekend when New Mexico comes to town. We will see you all then. In the meantime, and as always...

Go Broncos!