Cougars' defense fails when needed most

HOUSTON Earlier this week, in advance of the Conference USA championship game, Houston coach Kevin Sumlin practically gushed. His defense had made significant strides this season and Sumlin made a concerted effort to shine a spotlight on that development. For a unit that featured seven new starters when the season commenced, incremental progress was anticipated. The talent base had been fortified. The additions to the defensive staff seemingly worked wonders. And as the Cougars' offense bolstered an undefeated rsum, the defense held up its end of the bargain in lockstep, offering support deemed noteworthy. It all came crashing down on Saturday. The third-down defense and the ability to restrict big plays deserted the Cougars as Southern Miss rolled to a 49-28 victory at Robertson Stadium that knocked sixth-ranked and undefeated Houston out of the Bowl Championship Series picture. Given the Cougars' defensive rise to respectability during November, few would have forecast this debacle. Houston had allowed on average 300 yards per game in cruising through the final third of its regular-season schedule, earning the accolades Sumlin gleefully doled out. "The story was the last five, six, seven weeks we haven't really given up big plays, particularly in the second half," Sumlin said. "Some of the decisions that we made (like) to punt the ball in the third quarter were based on our defense and how they had played. Up to that point we had given them short fields because of the wind and really I thought we held up pretty well in the first half defensively." Two short fields and two big plays were all the Golden Eagles needed to establish both unwavering momentum and surprising superiority. Southern Miss (11-2) covered a total of 73 yards on its first two touchdown drives, parlaying a 20-yard Richie Leone punt and a 15-yard penalty against the Cougars on an ensuing punt return into a 14-0 lead. When the Eagles needed big strikes they got those, too, including a 69-yard touchdown pass from Austin Davis to Dominique Sullivan in the second quarter and a 61-yard scoring play from Davis to Tracy Lampley in the third. The Lampley reception was his second on a wheel route, emblematic of the Cougars' inability to decipher the Eagles' game plan. "The two big plays that got away from us were uncharacteristic the last five or six weeks," Sumlin said. The refrain applauding the Eagles' preparation was universal. On its lone sustained drive of the afternoon, Southern Miss converted a pair of third-and-longs on the ground, opting to run against the Cougars' dime personnel. Davis foreshadowed the Eagles' rushing success by converting a 3rd-and-13 with a 15-yard run in the first quarter, and when the Eagles needed to move the chains later, they did with ease. Were the Cougars (12-1) caught by surprise? It sure sounded like it. "Their play-calling gashed us," Houston linebacker Phillip Steward said. "They had some good plays where they gashed us," added Houston linebacker Marcus McGraw, who finished with a team-high 11 tackles. "We got caught out of gaps every now and then, and that's what got us. We weren't in our gaps and they took advantage of it and they hit it." The Cougars surrendered 207 rushing yards, the fifth time this season an opponent gained at least 200 on the ground. Southern Miss totaled 486 yards, averaging 6.7 per play. When Houston desired to get off the field it couldn't, allowing the Eagles to convert 8 of 18 third-down snaps. The benchmarks Sumlin celebrated were rendered moot. The Cougars were left with few options other than to pay their respect to the Eagles. "The third downs were critical and we didn't have that," Sumlin said. "It was a tactic on third-and-long to attack that particular defense. We'd been pretty good up until that point. I thought they were well prepared."