A rare appearance on national television was not kind to the Green Wave on Halloween night. Despite entering Yulman Stadium with an astounding 8-0 record, Tulane endured a 38-14 beating at the hands of the Cincinnati Bearcats in front of a sparse home crowd.
Yikes. I don't really have a need to talk much about this game. I have made an active effort not to read any of the fan boards because I don't like ruining my Saturday and I pretty much know what is going to be there.
Here's a funny picture of a creepy Cat in the Hat though.
Look how lonely that creepy Cat in the Hat is. But I digress. Tulane went to halftime with a 24-0 deficit. The worst part is that it didn't have to be that way.
Tulane showed up for this one, at first. On superstar QB Gunner Kiel's first throw, Parry Nickerson picked off the Cincy gunslinger. He was abruptly benched for the rest of the game. Good news, right?
Well then Tanner Lee marches his team down the field completing every pass on the way. Maybe he has some Manning at Isidore Newman blood in him, who knows? The kid looked great though.
In the red zone, Tulane couldn't break through when going for the touchdown on fourth. Then it was all Munchie Legaux, graduate of the nearby Karr High School, for the rest of the half.
Cincy just straight up rolled through the Tulane defense. Nothing was stoppable. Pressure the QB? Munchie would float one to the screen for 30 yards. Try to cover the spread? Watch a Bearcats RB break through the line at twice the speed of our linebackers.
It just got out of hand. No way around that. Now that being said, there is one thing that I loved.
This team --- all year --- has come out of the locker room flat. They scored one touchdown in the third quarter of every game combined up to this point. Not this time.
Tanner Lee led his team on the opening drive to make it a 24-7 game. Tulane wasn't done. Darion Monroe picked off a charging Munchie on the next drive. After that, it was Lee time once again, who looked sharp and smart in the pocket, culminating in a TD throw in the red zone.
24-14. It's a game. Two scores. Maybe the Bearcats were getting a little ahead of themselves, but who knows? Tulane looked like a real team.
Then this happened.
Munchie hits a gentleman named Shaq Washington, who put in a phenomenal effort to haul this pass in. It is ruled a touchdown on the field. As the replay and the screenshot above shows though, the ball essentially rested on the receiver --- not in control -- until he crosses that boundary when he gets his hand back onto the ball. It is bobbling until he crosses out of bounds. The good folks of ESPN 2 confidently believed this one was coming back.
It did not. And the game was 31-14 and out of reach entering the fourth quarter. Look, I am not going to bellyache about this too much. When you put your team down by 24, you are one bad break from letting a game get away. I think it was a shitty call, but that is my $.02.
Regardless though, the momentum was gone. The air was sucked out of Yulman. And as the commentators noted, it seemed like Munchie's 75 friends and family in attendance made up about half of the total audience at that point.
Absolutely brutal. At least this dude perfectly timed going Hulk on his t-shirt for the ESPN cameras. Nice work, bro.
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