Tulane may be forced to remember the Alamodome for all the wrong reasons after its College Football Playoff hopes went from driver’s seat to depleted Thursday in one big stumble against UTSA.
The Green Wave (6-2, 3-1) opened their road trip in encouraging fashion with a 75-yard touchdown drive, but then couldn’t slow down or keep pace with the Roadrunners during a 31-point steamroll to a 48-26 victory.
“Disappointing loss — starts with me and really ends with me, too,” Tulane coach Jon Sumrall said. “I’ve gotta have the team ready to play better. And as a coaching staff, we’ll get a lot of things corrected and ask our guys to look in the mirror as we go through this and figure out what we can all do to be better. But it starts with me, like I said. Heartbreaking loss. Don’t like the way we played. The scoreboard matters, but the way we played is really frustrating.”
UTSA scored on six of its first seven completed possessions and capitalized on a pair of first-half takeaways — and four total Green Wave turnovers by night’s end — to blow the game open before halftime and have an immediate answer each time Tulane tried to rally.
Roadrunners quarterback Owen McCown finished 31-for-33 (93.9%) for 370 yards and four touchdowns — two each to David Amador II and Devin McCuin, who finished with 113 yards on 10 catches and 96 yards on eight catches, respectively.
Tulane’s offense was again led by quarterback Jake Retzlaff, who completed 14 of his 28 passes (50.0%) for 194 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions and rushed seven times for a team-high 63 yards and another score.
Sophomore Omari Hayes caught three passes for 69 yards and a score. Senior Tre Shackelford finished with three receptions for 52 yards and a touchdown, and freshman Zycarl Lewis Jr. added 47 yards and a score on four catches.
Veteran safety Bailey Despanie (Carencro) and sophomore Kevin Adams III (Destrehan) led the defense with nine and six tackles, respectively.
“I just feel like they had a game plan they just executed,” Despanie said. “They executed better than us. That pretty much just wraps up the game… It’s frustrating when things don’t go your way, you know what I mean? But, at the same time, we were still in the game. We just were one play away from changing the tide, so that’s something we kept pushing on the sideline: just trying to get that one play, that one play to keep going. And we just fought toward the end, but things just didn’t go our way tonight.”
Tulane would now have to not only win its four remaining games, but also receive some help to potentially reach a fourth straight American Athletic Conference title game — let alone back-door its way into this year’s College Football Playoff field.
Navy (7-1, 5-1), Memphis (8-1, 4-1), North Texas (8-1, 4-1) and South Florida (6-2, 3-1) and East Carolina (5-3, 3-1) are all [Note: as of a Saturday update.] ahead of or even with the Green Wave in the league standings.
Sumrall and company head to Memphis for a Friday date with the Tigers before returning home Nov. 15 against Florida Atlantic (3-5, 2-3), visiting Temple (5-4, 3-2) on Nov. 22 and wrapping up the regular season at home Nov. 29 against Charlotte (1-7, 0-5).
“We need to feel the pain of this one for a little while,” Sumrall said. “This should hurt, it should sting, it should suck, and it does. And then we have to move forward, and we have to stick together. There’s gonna be a lot of negativity about how we performed, and understandably so. Like, I get it. I mean, I’m negative about how we performed. But it doesn’t do us any good for me to sit around and sulk. We’ve got to bounce back and pick ourselves up. We’ve got a pulse, which means we’ve got a chance.
“You know, last year we made it to the conference championship game with one loss in conference play. I think there’s several teams now that have one-loss, including us… And so we still have a lot to play for and we’re still in control of a lot of things that are in front of us.”
