COLUMBIA, Mo. - Arkansas State looked right at home on its third road trip Saturday night until the final 20 minutes.
The Red Wolves, aided by a record-setting performance from wide receiver J.D. McKissic, played SEC member Missouri virtually even through much of the first three quarters at soggy Faurot Field.
Then Missouri quarterback James Franklin led a 94-yard drive that ended with a 5-yardtouchdown pass to L’Damian Washington, followed by an 87-yard march capped by a 1-yard Henry Josey touchdown run as Missouri outscored ASU 27-3 over the final 19 minutes of a 41-19 victory.
The loss came a week after a lethargic 31-7 loss at Memphis, one that spurred at least one meeting between players and what was described by some as one of the most spirited weeks of practice of the season.
Playing close for 40 minutes didn’t leave anybody with positive feelings immediately after a second consecutive loss for the first time since Steve Roberts’ final season in 2010.
“There was a lot of disappointed young men in that room tonight,” ASU Coach Bryan Harsin said. “Sometimes you feel like someone just slugged you 10 times in the gut when you lose.”
What made it worse was that some of those slugs were self-induced.
“It hurts worse,” quarterback Adam Kennedy said. “Just knowing we were so close.”
ASU led 16-14 early in the third quarter and was still within 20-16 at the start of the fourth quarter. But Franklin, Missouri’s senior quarterback who was seventh nationally in total offense before Saturday, led three fourth-quarter touchdown drives, finished with 285 yards of offense and had a hand in four touchdowns to thwart ASU’s bid to beat a standing SEC member for the first time.
Franklin was 20 of 29 passing for 255 yards with 3 touchdown passes and he also ran for a score.
“He’s a good player and that’s what good players do,” Missouri Coach Gary Pinkel said of Franklin. “The team looks for him, and obviously he made some plays out there.”
Franklin’s plays helped Missouri snag control of a game after ASU wasted opportunities to do so itself.
Three weeks after several red zone trips were wasted in an eventual 38-9 loss at Auburn, ASU again settled for field goals rather than touchdowns too often to hold off what ended up being Missouri’s fourth-quarter onslaught.
ASU (2-3), which was held to 255 yards last week, gained 425 yards, including 308 on Kennedy’s 37 of 46 passing. McKissic set a school record with 15 catches for 117 yards and Julian Jones caught 10 passes for 136 yards.
But each of its first two drives ended with Brian Davis field goals after it got inside the Missouri 20 to give ASU a 6-0 lead. In all, Davis made four field goals when touchdowns would have meant putting a bigger scare into Missouri (4-0), which won its first four games for the first time since 2010.
In all, ASU got inside Missouri’s 20 five times, and finished with three field goals and a touchdown. That was better than in the Auburn loss, but not enough to keep up with Franklin. It’s a growing trend that had Kennedy, who admitted to a torn tendon in his right pinkie after the game, struggling for answers.
“It’s incredibly frustrating for all the guys,” Kennedy said. “We’re driving up and down on just about every team we play. Then, I don’t know what happens in the red zone. It’s a little thing here, a little thing there.”
The most damaging trip came at the end of the first half, when ASU trailed 14-13, with a third and goal at the Missouri 1. David Oku was stopped short on second down, then on third, Kennedy tried to throw away a pass while under pressure. The pass was caught instead by Oku, who was stopped for a loss of 22 yards.
With no timeouts, the clock kept rolling and ASU couldn’t get Davis onto the field for a field goal.
“You want to get seven [points]. That’s the whole goal there. We’ll take three,”Harsin said. “Now, you walk out of there with nothing, that’s deflating.”
That play came during a stretch of more than 19 minutes in which ASU outscored Missouri 10-0 and held the Tigers to seven yards on six plays.
The sequence began when linebacker Kyle Coleman scooped up a Marcus Murphy fumble and returned it 56 yards for what appeared to be a touchdown. The play was whistled dead, and Murphy was ruled down before a replay review overturned the call, giving ASU the ball at its own 44 before a 56-yard drive that ended with Kennedy’s 17-yard touchdown pass to Jones.
The missed opportunities prevented ASU from keeping the advantage, and a Missouri offense that stayed in the game with big plays eventually found holes in the Red Wolves defense which featured one new starter and a played with what Harsin called a “passionate” effort.
“The whole week in practice we played with a chip on our shoulder,” said Coleman,who had six tackles. “We were going to show the world that we are better than what we put on tape. We didn’t want to give up.”
Freshman safety Money Hunter played in place of sophomore Chris Humes and the Red Wolves gave up 231 yards in the first half, but many of them came on big plays that attributed to Missouri’s first two scores.
Russell Hansbrough’s 42-yard dash set up Marcus Murphy’s 8-yard touchdown run to put the Tigers up 7-6 at the end of the first quarter, then James Franklin’s 68-yard pass to Dorial Green-Beckham - in which the 6-6 former fivestar prospect got behind cornerback Rocky Hayes - put Missouri up 14-6.
Then, when ASU kept a door open for Franklin, he led drives of 94, 87 and 67 yards. The last touchdown came after E.J Gaines’ interception of Kennedy and sealed any hopes of a comeback.
“By not scoring, we put them in position to find things that might work for them,” Harsin said, and they did.
SATURDAY’S GAMES Missouri 41, Arkansas State 19 Tennessee 31, South Alabama 24 W. Kentucky 19, Navy 7 Duke 38, Troy 31 Tulane 31, La.-Monroe 14 Wyoming at Texas State, (n)
Sports, Pages 23 on 09/29/2013