'Battle to the end': How does Tulane's loss at Houston impact the Green Wave bowl chances?

HOUSTON — The best Tulane can figure is they’ve been here before.

That might be the best approach to take after a 48-17 loss at Houston that ended the Green Wave winning streak at three. The loss Thursday (Nov. 15) also left the Green Wave needing to win the final game Nov. 24 at home against Navy to secure bowl eligibility.

This is a familiar scenario. Last year, Tulane went into the final regular-season game needing a win to get the sixth victory required for bowl eligibility. Then, the Green Wave lost with a goal-line stop by SMU on the final play. This time, the hope is for something different.

Certainly, they’ll want something different than what happened Thursday.

“We got a bunch of fighters on this team,” Tulane running back Darius Bradwell said. “That’s our mentality. It’s crazy to think that we’re in the same predicament we were last year, trying to fight to the last game. Since we’ve been in this position before, we know what to do. We just got to execute. Like I said the whole year, we just got to execute and be confident in what we’re doing."

That’s how Tulane (5-6 overall, 4-3 AAC) played the three games before Thursday. The Green Wave won two games against Tulsa and South Florida by rushing for more than 300 yards in each game, winning twice on the road in successive games for the first time since 2007.

Then, back home against East Carolina, the Green Wave scored three touchdowns on pass plays of 73 yards or longer, providing a needed big-play capability against a defense geared toward stopping the run.

Tulane won those games after sinking to 2-5 with a home loss to SMU where the Green Wave blew a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter. That’s what prompted the change at quarterback for graduate transfer Justin McMillan to replace second-year transfer senior Jonathan Banks.

On Thursday against Houston (8-3, 5-2), Tulane faced a quarterback in D’Eriq King whose one rushing and one passing touchdown put him at an FBS-leading 50 combined scores for the season before a knee injury put him out for the second half. His biggest play was the 64-yard run around the right end and down the sideline that set up the touchdown that put the Cougars ahed 14-6.

There also was the play of Houston running back Patrick Carr, whose 100 rushing yards before halftime were more than he had ever run in a full college game. The junior finished the night with 18 carries for 139 yards and two touchdowns.

“I thought they were going to have a tough time running the ball on us,” said coach Willie Fritz, whose defense came into the game ranked second in the American Athletic Conference against the run.

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Tulane played the first half without team sacks leader Patrick Johnson because of his second-half targeting infraction against East Carolina, but that appeared to not matter much when the Green Wave sacked King twice the first two times Houston had the ball. It was what Houston did with its quick-tempo offense to get players in the open field that did the most damage.

“I’m disappointed with how we tackled,” Fritz said. “We didn’t play with the physicality we needed to.”

Carr’s first touchdown came on a 21-yard run where he sidestepped multiple Tulane defenders.

His other big run of 36 yards came when he evaded another set of Tulane defenders. That began an 11-play drive that ended with 3-yard scoring run by King, who beat Tulane safety Roderic Teamer Jr. to the front corner of the end zone on a second-and-goal run for a 28-9 lead.

The 298 rushing yards for Houston were the most allowed by Tulane this season. Houston’s 6.2 yards per carry also were the most the Green Wave gave up this season.

Offensively, Tulane did almost nothing against a Houston pass defense that ranked last in the nation with 314.1 yards allowed per game. McMillan had a pass intercepted for the first time since high school on a ball tipped at the line of scrimmage and caught by a Houston linebacker in Tulane territory. That set up the touchdown that put Houston ahead 21-9.

McMillan got picked off again later in the first half, putting him at two interceptions against only three completions by halftime. He ended the game 10 of 20 passing for 147 yards. His biggest pass play of 42 yards to Terren Encalade set up the 20-yard touchdown run by Bradwell that made the score 7-6 after a missed extra point.

Next, Tulane has nine days between games, giving these players plenty of time to regroup.

“We got to regroup,” Fritz said. “We just got to. We got to learn from this, put it aside and flush it down the toilet and go on to the next ballgame.”

The next game is against Navy, which runs the option-style offense common at service academies. Tulane should be favored to win against the Midshipmen, who take a 2-8 record (1-5 AAC) into Saturday against Tulsa, but then nothing comes easy.

“That’s something that’s written in stone, that we’re going to have to battle to the end to get the bowl game,” senior linebacker Zachery Harris said. "And hopefully get the victory this time.”

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