Snow steals show in Shreveport; Sherrill dodges A&M questions

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, January 2, 2001

[01/02/01] SHREVEPORT, La. Dontae Walker’s 143 yards and three touchdown runs and Wayne Madkin’s game-winning 6-yard TD scramble in overtime made them heroes for Mississippi State in its thrilling 43-41 Independence Bowl win over Texas A&M on Sunday.

But the real star of the game was Mother Nature.

A driving snowstorm covered Shreveport with about three inches of snow, had the field blanketed by gametime, and provided players from both teams most of whom had never played football in the snow before with an unexpected thrill.

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But while the snow meant extra fun for the players, it meant extra work for the teams’ equipment managers, who were left scrambling to keep footballs dry and help players to somehow keep their footing and stay warm.

“We didn’t even expect it (to snow) until we got up this morning and looked at the weather channel and they said a possible inch accumulation,” said State equipment manager Michael Parson, a Warren Central graduate. “I never really thought it was going to happen, but my roommate kept saying it was going to happen.”

Parson’s roommate, fellow WC grad and Bulldogs’ starting free safety Josh Morgan, said playing in the snow was a dream come true.

“I thought maybe it’d be a couple of flurries, but nothing like this. I’ve never been a part of anything like this. This is awesome,” said Morgan, who had five tackles, two of them solos. “I never thought it’d happen, but it feels good.”

“Basically, I had fun out there,” said MSU running back Dicenzo Miller, who accounted for 48 of State’s 246 rushing yards. “It made me feel like a little kid again.”

Parson said keeping the footballs dry was the most difficult part of his night. The Bulldogs practiced in the cold all week, so temperature wasn’t a factor, he said, but the footing was so bad that little could be done about it.

“We had our cleat boards, and every time they would come off the field we had them on the sidelines stumping their cleats off. But as soon as you went back on the field, you lost it anyway,” Parson said.

That was evident on several of the game’s touchdowns. Texas A&M quarterback Mark Farris threw two touchdown passes, a 42-yarder to Robert Ferguson just before halftime that gave the Aggies (7-5) a 20-14 lead, and a 35-yarder off a screen pass to receiver Bethel Johnson early in the fourth. On both plays, MSU defensive backs slipped while trying to make a play.

Another Aggie score, a 9-yard run by Richard Whitaker to put A&M up 7-0, was set up by one of four first-half Bulldog fumbles on the center-quarterback exchange that Madkin blamed on cold hands.

“The weather changed the gameplan,” Texas A&M head coach R.C. Slocum said. “The footing was different, obviously a whole lot of things about the footing were different. The backs making cuts, the linemen getting off of their blocks. So you had a lot of chance in plays, where guys would slip down or guys would be about to make tackles and slip down.”

Johnson’s TD gave the Aggies a 28-21 lead and A&M battering ram Ja’Maar Toombs, a 275-pound fullback who rushed for 193 yards on 35 carries, added the second of his three touchdowns with 9:20 to play to make it 35-21.

State (8-4) cut it to 35-28 on Walker’s 32-yard TD run a minute later, but the Bulldogs appeared to be in trouble when they punted the ball back to A&M with 4:34 to play. That’s when Marco Minor, who had slipped at the 5-yard line on Ferguson’s touchdown catch, made up for his earlier mistake with an interception at the Aggie 9. Madkin hit tight end Donald Lee for a 4-yard TD to tie the game with 1:30 to play.

The game went into overtime, where Toombs capped a great night with a bruising 25-yard TD run on the first play to give A&M a 41-35 lead.

State came up with one more miracle, however, when Willie Blade blocked the extra point. Eugene Clinton recovered and was about to be tackled at the 34-yard line when he pitched to Julius Griffith, who went 67 yards for a two-point conversion.

The play fired up the Bulldogs, and Madkin did the rest. He scrambled 19 yards to the Aggie 6 on MSU’s first play of its overtime possession, then ran the rest of the way two plays later, stretching the ball across the goal line after he was hit at the 1.

“All I knew was I broke containment,” Madkin said. “I had a guy coming at me and I was trying to stretch the ball as far as I could, and then when I looked up and all these guys jumped up on me and I couldn’t breathe, I knew that I got in.”

The excitement of the game nearly overshadowed its biggest subplot the first-ever meeting between MSU head coach Jackie Sherrill and his former team, as well as the man he picked to succeed him, A&M coach R.C. Slocum. Sherrill, who talked with Slocum at length during warm-ups, dodged most questions about the reunion, but said the win was a sweet one.

“Considering everything, yes, it is a big victory,” Sherrill said, adding, “That’s all you guys trying to make a lot out of this game that’s not there. I didn’t play a down. These guys played the football game, and they’re the ones that won it.”