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This Day In Sports…November 24, 2018:
In a winner-take-all game for the Mountain Division title in the Mountain West, Boise State outlasts Utah State 33-24 on the blue turf to earn a spot in the conference championship game the following week at home against Fresno State. The story of the night was Broncos running back Alexander Mattison, who had eclipsed the 1,000-yard plateau on the season the week before (we talked about it here last Monday). In this one, Mattison rushed for 200 yards on 37 carries, the third-most in school history.
Mattison produced the first “two-hurdle” game of his career against Utah State, drawing a loud “ooooooohhhhhhh!” on each leap from the near-sellout crowd of 35,906. His third touchdown of the night, a one-yard insurance plunge with four seconds left that put him at 200 yards on the button, added an exclamation point before the chilled but raucous throng. Moments earlier, Mattison had broken loose on a 59-yard gain to essentially put away a game that was very much in doubt.
And then there was quarterback Brett Rypien, whose toughness was often mentioned in his senior season by coach Bryan Harsin. If fans needed any more proof of it, Rypien displayed it in taking a vicious fourth-quarter targeting shot from Utah State’s Tipa Galeai, who was ejected from the game. Rypien was on the turf for a few moments but stayed in, and on the next play he hit A.J. Richardson on an 11-yard first-down throw. He then capped the drive with his one-yard TD toss to Garrett Collingham.
The resurgent Aggies had won 10 games in a row going into the contest and had been averaging 49 points per game. Current Green Bay Packers star Jordan Love was Utah State’s quarterback, and he threw for 363 yards and three touchdowns with one interception (by Kekaula Kaniho). That was the best performance against Boise State by Love, who went 0-3 versus the Broncos. The other two games were routs in Logan, with the Aggies falling 41-14 in 2017 and 56-21 in 2019. Love threw for 168 and 229 yards in those games, respectively.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
