Disappointed UC players gather on the field after the game. (Steven M. Herppich photos) | ZOOM |

        PONTIAC, Mich. — The University of Cincinnati fans showed up, but their team, the one known for generating turnovers and field goals and big plays on offense, did not. And so, the Bearcats lost the Motor City Bowl to Marshall 25-14 before 26,018 fans at the Silverdome on Wednesday in an atypical performance.

        It left their quarterback hanging his head, their elusive star running back unable to explain why the Bearcats couldn't crease the Marshall defense more often than they did, and their star defensive end vowing to get bigger and stronger so as to never let this happen again.

        “We didn't throw a touchdown pass, were (even) in the takeaway department and ... not being able to kick that field goal (toward the end of the first half) hurt us,” UC coach Rick Minter said.

        The Bearcats muffed a center snap on that 34-yard attempt that would have made the score 17-9 at half and maybe given them momentum for the second half. Instead, they led only 14-9 and gave up two third-quarter touchdowns.

DeMarco McCleskey leaps over the Marshall defense for a TD. | ZOOM |

McCleskey celebrates after scoring. | ZOOM |

        All those things that had made UC winners of their last four regular season games and 6-0 at home and given them the Lou Groza Award winner and placed seven players on the all-conference team and made them one of the best takeway teams in the country were in short supply here.

        Maybe it was the five-week layoff, maybe it was big and strong Marshall QB Byron Leftwich (17-of-31 for 221 yards, with one passing TD and one running TD) and maybe it was that Marshall takes care of the football.

        “I had Leftwich around the collar several times, had the opportunity to sack him, but he ripped away,” said Antwan Peek, UC's rush-end. “Great players make those plays, and he made them.”

        Leftwich's knack for turning third-and-hopeless into first downs against a defense that had been opportunistic all season was critical.

        Whatever the reason for the defeat, it was a bitter disappointment for a team that was eager to show a national TV audience what it had showed its fans all season long, except for the Indiana and Louisville games.

        It was bitter for UC fans (many of them dressed in red and black) who were from Cincinnati, northern Ohio and Greater Detroit. They numbered about 8,000, only a couple thousand less than the Thundering Herd brought.

        The game that had started out to be so exciting — Marshall hit a long slant pass for a 77-yard touchdown on the fourth play from scrimmage, and UC an swered with a 10-play, 67-yard drive topped off by a great 2-yard running launch for a TD by DeMarco McCleskey — had turned into a penalty-flag strewn quagmire by the second quarter, and there it stayed.

Ray Jackson is tripped up by Marshall's Chris Crocker. | ZOOM |

        The Bearcats rallied to a 14-9 lead with 1:44 left in the first half on a TD that was keyed by UC's best play of the game: a sack-and-ball-strip from the Marshall QB by Peek.

        In five plays, four of them runs by McCleskey, UC scored. The drive was capped by nifty fourth-and-2 pitch to McCleskey around left end.

        “They weren't Memphis or Southern Miss but they got to the ball pretty good all day long,” McCleskey said of Marshall's defense.

        The 14-9 lead was as good as it got for the Bearcats.

        They gave up two third-quarter touchdowns to make it 22-14.

        With a little over two minutes to play, UC had a final gasp.

        The ball was on its 18-yard line, fourth and 1. It had been set up by a gritty run-after-catch by wide receiver LaDaris Vann — but typical of the Bearcats' day, they false-started and the fourth-and-6 pass was batted off course at the line of scrimmage, the last of a half-dozen bats just like that.

        And that was the ballgame.

DAUGHERTY: Bad ending to good run
Motor City Bowl Notebook
UC-Marshall Statistics

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