Orange Crush: West Virginia smashes Clemson in Orange Bowl

MIAMI GARDENS, FLA. - One by one, Clemson’s defenders walked to the bench, took off their helmets and sat quietly in defeat.

They had just given up another long touchdown drive, West Virginia’s seventh of the night, continuing an onslaught that seemed like it would never end.

Welcome back to the Bowl Championship Series, Clemson.

West Virginia and coach Dana Holgorsen’s “Air Raid” offense gave the Tigers a warm welcome back to the national spotlight, scoring 49 first-half points and cruising to an 70-33 Orange Bowl smashing at Sun Life Stadium. WVU’s mark set the record for most points scored by any team in college football bowl history.

Dabo Swinney talks 70-33 loss

Swinney: "It is what it is"

“It’s probably as bad a defensive performance as I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. “It’s incredibly disappointing.”

It was the Tigers’ second-worst bowl defeat ever, and evoked a 55-15 defeat to Texas Tech in the 2002 Tangerine Bowl. No.15 Clemson finished the season 10-4.

“Really, embarrassed,” said junior tight end Dwayne Allen when asked to describe his feelings. “Embarrassed for the community, embarrassed for the Clemson fan base, and Clemson football. We didn’t come out to play our game tonight, and it showed in the ugliest of ways - on the scoreboard.”

Holgorsen was on the Red Raiders’ staff as a wide receivers coach under mentor Mike Leach.

This was an embarrassing comedown for a program that spent the last month hoping to revive the echoes of its last BCS-level bowl game – the 1982 Orange Bowl, which saw Clemson clinch its only national title with a 22-15 win over Nebraska.

That game was won with plenty of defense and just enough offense.

Clemson didn’t have nearly enough of either here Wednesday.

In a vicious burst beginning late in the second quarter, the Tigers’ defense was throttled, thanks to poor coverage and a rash of turnovers that saw West Virginia put together a game-clinching 35-0 run.

The Orange Bowl began with pinball offense, back-and-forth action; tailback Andre Ellington set the tone with a 68-yard touchdown run – the third longest in bowl history. It was quickly answered by West Virginia, which put together an eight-play, 72-yard drive covering 2:39 and capped by Shawne Alston’s four-yard touchdown run.

The offenses traded back-and-forth punches, but the game changed with a stunning turnover.

Trailing 21-17 with 11 minutes left in the half, Clemson was on the verge of taking the lead back, with first and goal at the Mountaineer 3.

Ellington bulled up the middle, but was stripped at the half-yard line. The ball wound up in Darwin Cook’s hands; he sprinted 99 yards, outrunning a pair of Tigers for a shocking touchdown.

“It was a pretty huge moment,” Swinney said. “They hadn’t really stopped us. We were scoring, but they were matching us, and we couldn’t get a stop. We’d get momentum and lose momentum, get momentum, lose momentum. That was going to be a huge swing for us. It was going to put us up 24-21, we’re right back in this thing and still searching for a stop.

“….Now all of a sudden it’s 28-17.”

Clemson cut the lead to 28-20 on a Chandler Catanzaro 42-yard field goal, and with 4:49 left, the game looked like an epic shootout in the making.

More like an epic beatdown.

Using pinpoint passing, WVU quarterback Geno Smith cut through the Tigers’ secondary with ease, and finished the drive with a seven-yard touchdown run with 2:29 left in the half.

From there, the game took the form of N.C. State’s 37-13 beatdown in Raleigh, thanks to ill-advised turnovers.

From his own 25, Boyd threw a pass behind freshman wideout Sammy Watkins; it was easily intercepted by Pat Miller at the Tigers’ 38.

Smith immediately tossed a 30-yard gain to Will Milhouse to the Clemson 2, and a hot-potato pass to Tavon Austin made the score 35-20.

Scrambling from his own 18, Boyd fumbled, with West Virginia recovering at the Tigers’ 18.

Four plays later, Alston scored his second touchdown of the half, bulling in from three yards out as the clock ticked down to four seconds in the half.

“It’s just like a virus with turnovers,” Swinney said. “….It was turnovers, first of all, which sucked the life out of us.”

On the sidelines, normally fiery defensive coordinator Kevin Steele looked subdued, almost stunned, as he walked in front of his players with a dry-erase board, trying to draw up a plan.

When the half mercifully ended, West Virginia had the highest-scoring half by any team in bowl history. Not just Orange Bowl history or BCS bowl history.

Bowl history, period.

It was also the most points scored against Clemson in a half in its history. The previous record was 41 by Alabama in a 74-7 rout in 1931.

“In a nutshell, guys, that was about as ugly as it gets,” Steele said. “We didn’t execute very well, we didn’t tackle very well. They had one pass for 37 yards and passed for over 400. We have to tackle the catch, and we didn’t do a good job of that. Hats off to them. They did a great job, fast, fast, fast.

“It is what it is, it’s on me. I didn’t do a good job getting them to execute and getting them ready. We practiced well, I thought we had a good plan, we couldn’t get the bleeding to stop.”

After halftime, West Virginia just kept rolling.

The Mountaineers cashed in a pair of drives for touchdowns, a seven-play, 73-yard strike capped by Smith’s six-yard pass to Stedman Bailey and a five-play, 74-yard drive finished by Smith’s 37-yard touchdown toss to Austin.

“We had some situations where… we had some turnover situations, and I thought the guys were focused into it,” Steele said. “Probably trying too hard sometimes, just to make every play.”

With 9:18 left in the third quarter, the Tigers had already given up more points than their worst loss of the past 20 years, a 57-0 thumping by Florida State on Sept. 11, 1993.

It was the second-worst defensive effort in program history, behind the ’31 Alabama game.

“They came out explosive,” said junior safety Rashard Hall. “They had a great offense and a great scheme dialed up. They took the most advantage of the opportunities and it showed on the field.”

It was also a serious indictment of Steele’s defense, which gave up at least 30 points six times this season, but was coming off its best game of the year, a 38-10 ACC title-gem throttling of Virginia Tech.

Smith threw for 401 yards and six touchdowns, four to Austin, and set an Orange Bowl single-game passing yardage record. Austin had 11 receptions for 117 yards and the four scores.

“I’m as confident as I was last year standing in a press conference 6-7 and telling you we’d fix it,” Swinney said. “I’m as confident as that. We’ll be better.”

He said he would evaluate “everything we’ve done this year, good and bad.”

“We have not played to our standard defensively at all, and nobody is going to tell you otherwise,” he said. “We knew we were going to have some struggles this year, but I really felt like we’ve got to get guys to play with some a little more discipline, some more consistency.

“We’ve got to look at what we’re doing and make sure guys know what they’re doing, because missed assignments lead to big plays. We’ll look at everything and how we’re doing it and come back next year. We were the No.9 scoring defense in the country last year and top-25 the year before. Ain’t nobody forgotten how to coach or anything like that.”

Wednesday, rumors surfaced that Tennessee coach Derek Dooley was interested in hiring him as defensive coordinator; a performance like this could jeopardize his job security. Steele said he has not been contacted by nor contacted any program or head coach, or asked Swinney for permission to do so.

His focus was strictly forward.

And for a program hoping to awaken the echoes of its former glory under coach Danny Ford – inducted into the Orange Bowl’s Hall of Fame this week – it was a reminder that the Tigers have a long, long way to go.

“Tonight is a bitter taste,” Swinney said. “Really disappointing for our fans, especially those that traveled down here. Just so disappointing to play like we played. But we’ll be back.”