Vols' Hurd, Kamara Run Hog Wild In 59-30 Rout Of Bowling Green

Tennessee Notches 21st Straight Season-Opening Win In State

  • Saturday, September 5, 2015
  • Larry Fleming
Tennessee running back Jalen Hurd rushed for 123 yards and three touchdowns Saturday in the Vols' season-opening win over Bowling Green at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.
Tennessee running back Jalen Hurd rushed for 123 yards and three touchdowns Saturday in the Vols' season-opening win over Bowling Green at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.
photo by Dennis Norwood

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee started the 2015 college football season looking like the same team that routed Iowa in last January’s TaxSlayer Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla.

The Vols scored 21 first-quarter points and looked all the world like the country’s No. 25-ranked squad about to pulverize Bowling Green State University at Nissan Stadium.

But the Falcons, behind the rocket-armed Matt Johnson pulled within 21-20 before the Vols regained their footing and eventually escaped with a 59-30 season-opening victory before a near sellout crowd of 61,323 that sat through an 80-minute delay due to lightning in the area.

“That was a long game,” Tennessee coach Butch Jones said. “We talked at the delay that this would challenge our maturity as a football team.”

The Vols pulled away in the second half and won their first game as a ranked team since the Outback Bowl in 2008.

And the Vols may have unveiled the reincarnation of a monster Chuck Webb-Reggie Cobb backfield duo that ran wild in years past.

Alvin Kamara, the junior college All-American transfer making his Tennessee debut, and sophomore Jalen Hurd combined to rush for 267 ground yards and five touchdowns.

“They feed off each other,” Jones said. “You could see the excitement in them and in their body language.”

Hurd, who burst on the scene as a freshman in 2014, had touchdown runs of 8, 1 and 13 yards and finished with 123 yards on 23 carries. Kamara galloped to paydirt on runs of 10 and 56 yards. He piled up a game-high 144 yards on 15 carries.

That’s the first time for two Vols backs to gain at least 100 yards in a game since playing Western Kentucky in 2009.

“That’s pretty awesome,” said Hurd, who has gained 1,022 yards in 14 career games. “We’re just trying to rep and do everything we can to do awesome for the Tennessee Vols and get this team to a championship.”

Tennessee had 392 rushing yards, helping the Vols amass 604 total yards in the convincing triumph.

While Kamara’s long run was spectacular, his shorter touchdown burst was a thing of beauty. He made a move at the 7 and the fake left a Bowling Green defender grasping at air.

“(The long run) started with the O-line,” Kamara said. “They had a great push up front, great cutoffs and I just bounced it outside. I got a great block by Josh Smith, I think, and was just stroking down the sideline.”

Kamara was caught from behind, but the attempted tackle by a Falcons defender knocked the Vols back off balance, but he stumbled into the end zone with the score.

Junior quarterback Joshua Dobbs turned in a steady performance, completing 15-of-22 passes for 205 yards with touchdown tosses of 11 and 18 yards to Ethan Wolf. Dobbs added 89 yards on the ground.

Dobbs wanted to talk about what Kamara and Hurd accomplished, though.

“It’s great,” he said. “I told Alvin after his long touchdown it was like middle school again. I’ve been playing with Alvin for a long time, so seeing that explosiveness back out on the field was great. Obviously, we know what Jalen can do because of what he did last year. They’re a very experienced group.”

Wolf caught three passes for 35 yards, but freshman Jauan Jennings, who was playing high school ball at nearby Blackman High in Murfreesboro last season, grabbed three receptions for a team-high 56 yards.

Place-kicker Aaron Medley rounded out the Vols’ scoring with a field goal of 26 yards with 3:08 left in the game.

Bowling Green, a two-time defending division champion in the Mid-American Conference, ravaged the Vols’ secondary for 433 yards passing and the Falcons parlayed that into 557 of total offense.

Johnson pounded the Vols for 424 passing yards, completing 27-of-49 passes, many of them long bombs that Falcons receivers turned into big plays. Johnson had touchdown strikes of 11 and 31 yards to Hunter Folkertsma and Gehrig Dieter, respectively.

Dieter had seven catches for a game-high 133 yards.

Said Johnson, “We wanted to take advantage of their defensive backs. Sometimes they made plays on us. Sometimes we dropped the ball. Sometimes I overthrew them. We made enough plays on the deep balls to keep us in the game.”

The pass defense could be a real concern next week when Tennessee entertains the Oklahoma Sooners at Neyland Stadium in a game that be televised by ESPN at 6 p.m. The Vols are 1-2 against the Sooners, including last year’s 34-10 loss in Norman. Next Saturday’s game will be the first between the two teams played in Knoxville.

The Vols’ lone win came in the 1938 Orange Bowl and they dropped a 26-24 decision to Oklahoma in the 1967 Orange Bowl.

In all fairness to the pass defense, the Vols lost two projected starters to injuries in preseason camp and secondary coach Willie Martinez was suspended just before the game due to an impermissible recruiting contact 16 months earlier.

And, Todd Kelly Jr. spent part of the week in a Knoxville hospital with an infection related to having his tonsils taken out.

“It wasn’t all gloom and doom,” defensive back Brian Randolph said. “We took them seriously. We knew they had a bunch of talent. They came in and made some plays on us.”

When the game ended, the two teams had combined for 1,611 total yards and 89 points.

Bowling Green coach Dino Babers felt the Falcons’ defense played about like the Vols.

“I think the two defenses came out as a draw,” Babers said. “Now, it’s not like that statistically, but I promise you somebody is not going to sleep over there based off their defense, either.”

Bowling Green                              10 10 10 0 – 30

Tennessee                                     21 7 14 10 – 59

First Quarter

BGSU ­– FG Tyler Tate 40, 12:43

TENN – Jalen Hurd 8 run (Aaron Medley kick), 8:59

TENN – Alvin Kamara 10 run (Medley kick), 7:18

TENN – Hurd 1 run (Medley kick), 5:07

BGSU – Hunter Folkertsma 11 pass from Matt Johnson (Tate kick), 2:47

Second Quarter

BGSU – Gehrig Dieter 31 pass from Johnson (Tate kick), 11:00

BGSU – FG Tate 37, 5:31

TENN – Hurd 5 run (Medley kick), 1:52

TENN – Ethan Wolf 11 pass from Dobbs (Medley kick), 0:24

Third Quarter

BGSU – Ryan Burbrink 7 run (Tate kick), 11:33

TENN – Wolf 18 pass from Dobbs (Medley kick), 11:17

TENN – Kamara 56 run (Medley kick), 0:03

Fourth Quarter

TENN – Dobbs 18 run (Medley kick), 10:02

TENN – FG Medley 26, 3:08

YARDSTICK

                                              BGSU                  TENN

First Downs                            24                         29

Rushes/Yards                         34-124                   64-399

Passing Yards                         433                       205                                                       

Comp-Att-Int                           29-51-0                15-23-0

Total Yards                             63-557                 79-604

Fumbles-Lost                          1-1                       0-0        

Penalties-Yds                          12-128                 4-40     

INDIVIDUALS

RUSHING – Bowling Green: Fred Coppet 12-63, Travis Greene 9-34, Matt Johnson 10-22, Ryan Burbrink 1-7, Ronnie Moore 1-minus 1, Donovan Wilson 1-minus 1; Tennessee: Alvin Kamara 15-144, Jalen Hurd 23-123, Joshua Dobbs 12-89, John Kelly 8-29, Quinten Dormady  3-10, Jauan Jennings 2-3, Von Pearson 1-1.

PASSING – Bowling Green: Johnson 27-49-0 424, James Knapke 2-2-0 9; Tennessee: Dobbs 15-22-0 205, Dormady 0-1-0 0.

RECEIVING – Bowling Green: Gehrig Dieter 7-133, Moore 5-95, Burbrink 4-70, Chris Gallon 3-45, Roger Lewis 2-49, Teo Redding 2-12, Hunter Folkertsma 1-11, Coppet 1-8, Derek Lee 1-5, Wilson 1-2; Tennessee: Jennings 3-56, Josh Malone 3-40, Ethan Wolf 3-35, Pearson 2-48, Johnathon Johnson 2-27, Kamara 2-minus 1.

(E-mail Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @larryfleming44)

 

 

Hurd's runningmate in the backfield, newcomer Alvin Kamara picked up 144 yards and two touchdowns. The Vols picked up 399 yards on the ground, averaging 6.2 yards per rush.
Hurd's runningmate in the backfield, newcomer Alvin Kamara picked up 144 yards and two touchdowns. The Vols picked up 399 yards on the ground, averaging 6.2 yards per rush.
photo by Dennis Norwood
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