Ole Miss can't stop Miami in final minutes of Fiesta Bowl loss
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Miami quarterback Carson Beck saw nothing but open field as he high-stepped three yards into the end zone with 18 seconds to play and broke the hearts of the thousands of Mississippi fans that packed State Farm Stadium for the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl.
The Hurricanes advanced to the College Football Playoff national championship game with a 31-27 win despite the Rebels taking two leads in the fourth quarter of a back-and-forth game.
With its best running back limited to two carries through three quarters, Ole Miss needed its unflappable quarterback, Trinidad Chambliss, to take the College Football Playoff in his hands.
Chambliss did just that, engineering two scoring drives in the fourth quarter. But Mississippi’s defense could not hold the lead.
There certainly appeared to be more Ole Miss fans in the State Farm Stadium seats than those cheering for the Hurricanes, and they were rewarded for being loud and energetic the entire game with the way Chambliss and his team played against a Miami defense that had been dominant against Texas A&M and Ohio State in the previous two games of the CFP.
Chambliss, a transfer from Division II Ferris State who started the season as a backup, threw a 24-yard strike to a wide-open Dae’Quan Wright with 3:13 to play for a go-ahead touchdown. Then it came down to Mississippi’s overworked defense to hold the lead, but Miami came up big.
Chambliss completed 23 of 37 passes for 277 yards. A lot of those yards came in a wild fourth quarter.
Lucas Carneiro, Mississippi’s thunder-footed kicker, booted his shortest field goal of the day, a 21-yarder with 7 minutes to play, to give Ole Miss a 19-17 lead, one of his four field goals on the night.
Carneiro hit three others from 50-plus yards, including a 58-yarder late in the first half.
The Ole Miss defense was on the field for more than twice the amount of time as the Hurricanes, and fatigue could have been a factor in Miami’s four-play, 75-yard touchdown drive in the fourth quarter that made the score 24-19.
If being tired was an issue on that drive, it must have been on Miami’s winning possession.
A lackluster start on offense against a fast and swarming Hurricanes defense didn’t bode well for Ole Miss, which had minus-1 yards of total offense after one quarter.
Kewan Lacy ran 73 yards up the middle for a touchdown, shedding two tackles before breaking into the open field on the first play of the second quarter. But Lacy, the Ole Miss single-season rushing touchdowns record holder with 24, who surpassed 1,500 rushing yards on the season, was hardly heard from again after that long run.
He missed much of the second quarter with what appeared to be a leg injury, then came out with a wrap around the leg in the second half. He got two carries, though he operated out of Mississippi’s backfield.
Without Lacy at full effectiveness, Ole Miss became largely one-dimensional on offense. Still, Chambliss rallied them to a near-victory.
Ole Miss finished the season 13-2, winning twice in the CFP despite its head coach, Lane Kiffin, departing to LSU at the end of the regular season.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Chambliss, Ole Miss come up just short in CFP semifinal loss
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