The Pacific Life Holiday Bowl is known for lots of offense and exciting finishes. Well, at least the offense was evident this time around in the 30th edition of the bowl game in San Diego.
Texas, which recorded its seventh straight 10-win season, jumped out to a 21-0 lead, then put it on cruise control en route to a 52-34 win over Arizona State last Thursday evening at Qualcomm Stadium.
The 17th-ranked Longhorns topped the 12th-ranked Sun Devils by creating pressure for ASU quarterback Rudy Carpenter for much of the evening.
Texas (10-3), meantime, got an MVP performance from quarterback Colt McCoy, who tossed one TD and ran for another.
Jamaal Charles rushed 27 times for 161 yards and two touchdowns for the Longhorns, who rebounded from a regular season-ending loss to archrival Texas A&M.
“I’m proud of the seniors because they’ve won four straight bowl games, and that has never happened at the University of Texas in four straight years,” Texas
head coach Mack Brown said. “I’m proud that they’ve won 10 games each of their years. They’ll be leaving with a Big 12 Conference championship and a national championship, and most people don’t get to experience four bowl games in their career, much less the opportunities they’ve taken and turned into positives throughout their careers.”
Brown added that he felt the difference in the game was his team’s ability to force turnovers on the evening.
“I felt like we really did a great job forcing turnovers tonight,” Brown continued. “We forced four and had a chance for about three or four others. That’s something that we hadn’t done as well throughout the year as we wanted to, and we felt like that was probably the difference in the ballgame.”
ASU (10-3) was its own worst enemy, turning the ball over five times as Carpenter threw two picks. Carpenter, who threw two TD passes, was also sacked four times on the evening in front of a crowd of 64,020. Thomas Weber added a pair of field goals for the Sun Devils.
Texas, which lost to Washington State in its last visit to the Holiday Bowl in 2003, outgained ASU 474-327 in total offensive yardage.