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Penalties nag USU in one-point loss to Wyoming By
Doug Layne "We continue to find ways to shoot ourselves in the foot," Coach Mick Dennehy said. "We are not good enough to overcome the penalties we made tonight." Six of the 11 penalties came from Aggie personal fouls. "It's just not smart. It's not disciplined. It came back to hurt us. It's everyone's fault," receiver Kevin Curtis said. Indeed it did come back to haunt the Aggies as they came back to within one point with less than a minute left in the game. Down 43-36, quarterback Jose Fuentes connected on a 16-yard touchdown strike to Chris Stallworth. But a celebraton penalty came after the touchdown when Stallworth took off his helmet. That made the Aggies' simple chip shot for the extra point 15 yards farther than normal. And that probably helped Wyoming block the point-after attempt. "I'm not going to blame anything on the officals. Rules state you cannot take your helmet off and celebrate. That is exactly what we did," Dennehy said. Despite all of the penalties, Utah State was able to manage 566 yards on offense. Emmett White carried the ball for a total of 275 yards. White finished the game with three touchdowns, including a 48-yard run on the fifth play of the game. "Emmett's a very good player; he has really good mobility" Dennehy said. "A kid like that you got to hit him hard." White also caught the ball five times for 38 yards. Kevin Curtis finished the game with 119 of USU's 294 yards receiving yards, including a touchdown shortly before the half to put the Aggies up 23-16. "The line blocked hard and played hard. We moved the ball all night," Curtis said. Unfourtunaltly for USU, the Cowboys were able to move the ball just as well. It seemed that Wyoming was always able to have an anwer for every time Utah State scored. Late in the third quarter, just as it looked as if the Aggies were on their way to victory, Wyoming's Casey Bramlet found an open Malcom Floyd for an 80-yard touchdown strike. "He just made the free safety miss, and they had a zone blitz on and Casey got it in the window and he made the guy miss and he was off to the races," Wyoming Coach Vic Koenning said. The Aggies never recovered from the 80-yard touchdown and would be outscored in the final quarter of the game. With the loss USU now drops to 0-3 as the Cowboys improve their record to 2-1. USU's schedule doesn't get any easier as they will play host Saturay to the Univerisy of Oregon, currently ranked sixth in the nation. The Ducks have a Heisman candidate in quarterback Joey Harrington and an All-American cornerback in Rashad Bauman.
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