College football took over Christmas Eve with an entertaining tussle between the Houston Cougars and the Fresno State Bulldogs in the Hawaii Bowl.
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Much of the initial games of the 2017 bowl season were blowouts. Exciting, evenly-matched contests have been hard to find, but Christmas Eve brought forth one of the better games of the bowl calendar to date.
Fresno State entered as the runners-up in the Mountain West Conference after a scheduling quirk pitted them against Boise State in successive weeks. The Bulldogs won the regular season meeting but fell in the conference championship game to the Broncos. Their consolation prize was a trip to Hawaii to take on the Houston Cougars.
Houston had a strenuous first year under new head coach Major Applewhite. The Cougars had some respectable wins (Arizona, South Florida) and a few maddening losses (Texas Tech, Tulane). There were some growing pains, but they still had their moments when things seemed to be coming together. Many of those positive signs came from big players generated by their defense. It’s not surprising then that defenders scored two touchdowns for the Cougar’s in the Hawaii Bowl.
Applewhite put burly defensive tackle in at running back the first time his team got into the red zone. The handoff to the big man worked perfectly, giving Houston an early 7-0 lead. Houston would fall behind by seven late in the third quarter before returning a blocked field goal 94 yards to tie the game entering the fourth quarter.
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Jaron Bryant intercepted Houston’s D’Eriq King to put the game away late in the fourth quarter. Houston would attempt a late rally, ultimately falling just one score to short, losing by a final score of 33-27.