Sept. 8, 2007
Final Stats
SAN DIEGO,CA --- The USD football team improved to 2-0 on the season as they defeated the Marist Red Foxes, 38-17. It was USD's 20th straight win at Torero Stadium, and head coach Ron Caragher's first in front of the Torero home crowd of 3,071. Senior All-American quarterback Josh Johnson returned to the lineup and didn't show any signs of rust as he completed 24-of-28 passes for 403 yards and 4 touchdowns. The 403 yards passing is a new career-best for the senior out of Oakland, California, and he now needs just 2 TD passes and 374 yards to set new Torero career marks and pass up Eric Rasmussen (75 TDs; 7,487 yards). Junior WR John Matthews was on the receiving end of 6 passes for 169 yards and 2 scores (39 & 80 yards). The Torero defense came up with the some big stops in the final period when Marist showed signs of threatening to score; twice USD held the Red Foxes on 4th and one.
The Toreros got on the scoreboard first with a 1-yard TD burst by junior running back JT Rogan. Marist answered with a 34-yard Bradley Rowe field goal, but Josh Johnson connected on his first TD pass of the 2007 campaign with a 39-yard strike to WR John Matthews for a 14-3 lead at the end of the first quarter. In the 2nd quarter, Marist moved the ball 80 yards but came away with no points as Rowe missed from 27 yards out. On USD's first play from scrimmage, Johnson threw a perfect bomb to a wide open Matthews down the right side for an 80-yard TD strike. He followed up with a 9-yard TD pass to WR Wes Doyle to increase the lead to 28-3 with 2:35 left in the half. Marist pulled the score to 28-10 at halftime as Tim Keegan hauled in a 4-yard pass from QB Steve McGrath with just four ticks left on the clock.
In the 3rd quarter, Marist rambled 81 yards on 8 plays with Adam Hansen rushing in from 5-yards out to make it 28-17. From there the Toreros closed out the scoring with a Hutch Parker 22-yard field goal, and an acrobatic catch in the end zone from JT Rogan for 20 yards with 2:21 left in the period. Neither team would score the rest of the evening, but the Torero defense came up with some big plays at the right time.
For the game USD totaled 525 yards of offense. Rogan finished with 83 yards of hard running on 19 attempts. Besides Matthews, Wes Doyle caught 7 balls for 84 yards and 1 TD; JT Rogan caught 4 balls for 39 yards; Mitch Ryan had 3 catches for 35 yards and Kenny Stivers netted two receptions for 68 yards. Defensively the Toreros were paced by Jared Forrester (14 tackles), Patrick O'Neill (12 tackles), Ronnie Pentz (12 tackles), Eric Bakhtiari (7 tackles; 1.5 sacks), Paul Tremblay (7 tackles) and Matt Shearer (7 tackles).
USD returns home next Saturday to take on Northern Colorado, a scholarship program that competes in the Big Sky Conference, at 6 pm at Torero Stadium.
