San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Bohanon’s career day leads Baylor past West Virginia
WACO — Gerry Bohanon saw something in his Baylor teammates during the week with the offense coming off a poor showing that helped knock the Bears out of the Top 25.
Whatever the quarterback saw showed up on game day.
Bohanon had career highs of 336 yards passing and four touchdowns, including a 75yarder to Tyquan Thornton on the second play of the game, while also scoring on a 1-yard sneak in Baylor’s 45-20 victory over West Virginia on Saturday.
Thornton caught eight passes for a career-best 187 yards and two TDs as the Bears scored on four of their first five possessions a week after starting with eight consecutive punts in a 24-14 loss to Oklahoma State right after Baylor had entered the poll.
“That wasn’t our offense,” Bonahon said. “So this week, we had a really good week, like a really, really good week. Just stacked days on days this week and we knew we were going to come out and dominate. We knew last week, we couldn’t do that anymore.”
With the Bears (5-1, 3-1 Big 12) celebrating the 10th anniversary
of Robert Griffin III’s Heisman Trophy season by showing frequent highlights, Bohanon was 18 of 29 with no interceptions, giving the fourth-year junior 183 career attempts without a pick.
Jarret Doege was sacked six times, and the Mountaineers (2-4, 0-3) again couldn’t get the Big 12’s worst run game going. West Virginia, which had 90 mostly empty yards rushing, has lost its first three conference games for the second time
since joining the league in 2012.
“We didn’t consistently block them, and we never covered them,” WVU coach Neal Brown said. “If you can’t block them on offense and you don’t cover them on defense it’s going to be a long day. And it was.”
Thornton caught Bohanon’s first pass 7 yards from the line of scrimmage, split the defense and ran untouched on a play that was 3 yards shy of the longest of the senior’s career.
“We haven’t covered Thornton yet,” Brown said. “He may still be running out there wide open.”
The Mountaineers needed just 1:38 to get even when Sean Ryan caught a 12-yard pass from Doege that was tipped by Baylor safety Christian Morgan.
Doege was 24 of 37 for 272 yards with a touchdown and was replaced with the game out of reach by Garrett Greene, who had a 13-yard scoring run late.
Baylor scored the next 21 points.
NO. 24 SMU 31, NAVY 24
Tanner Mordecai threw for 324 yards and two touchdowns, and the Mustangs rallied from a 14-point second-quarter deficit to beat the Midshipmen on the road.
Bryan Massey scored on a 95-yard kickoff return to begin the comeback for the unbeaten Mustangs. SMU (6-0, 2-0 American Athletic Conference) had the game tied by halftime and went up 31-24 on a 22-yard TD pass from Mordecai to Jordan Kerley with 8:19 remaining in the final quarter.
Mordecai now has 26 touchdown passes on the season. He also threw a 66-yarder to Reggie Roberson on fourth-and-1 to
open the scoring, but Navy (1-4, 1-2) answered with the next 21 points.
Chance Warren tied the game with a 23-yard scoring run, then Tai Lavatai threw the first touchdown pass of the season for the Midshipmen, 37 yards to Kai Puailoa-Rojas on a fleaflicker.
TRINITY 27, CENTRE 7
Tucker Horn threw three touchdown passes to help the Tigers remain undefeated with a win against the Colonels at Trinity University Football Stadium.
Horn connected on 21 of 33 passes for 246 yards without an interception, hitting Austin Bertness for two scores and Brian Stewart for a third. Horn also added a rushing touchdown for the Tigers (4-0, 2-0 Southern Athletic Association).
Trinity’s defense held Centre (4-1, 1-1 Southern Athletic Association) to 180 yards and notched four sacks, giving up just one touchdown early in the second quarter.
The Tigers look to keep their undefeated streak intact when they host Millsaps at 1 p.m. next Saturday.