With a BCS bowl bid already locked up, the University of Cincinnati football team won the Big East Conference championship outright Saturday Nov. 29, with a 30-10 victory over Syracuse.
Head coach Brian Kelly said he had to have a discussion with his team before the game to make sure they didn’t let up after finding out they clinched a BCS bowl berth with Pittsburgh’s win over West Virginia on Friday.
“We’ve got college-age kids that saw that they won the Big East Championship but still had a game to play,” Kelly said. “My style is straightforward and I told it like it was. We were excited, but I didn’t want to share with anyone and neither did the kids. That is why we had to finish it the right way.”
When head coach Brian Kelly came to UC, he made it known that his goal was to win a Big East championship. Less than two years later, Kelly’s team reached that goal.
“We finished what we started. We started this year with the goal to become the Big East champions. When we started to show that we could play with anybody, we got other people to believe that Cincinnati football could be a Big East champion,” Kelly said. “It is a great day to be a Bearcat.”
On the game’s opening drive, quarterback Tony Pike completed five passes to senior Dominick Goodman for 44 yards, setting up a 10-yard touchdown run by John Goebel giving UC a 7-0 lead.
A pair of Jake Rogers field goals made the score 13-3 going into halftime.
UC’s defense was dominant against the pass in the first half. At halftime, Syracuse quarterback Cam Dantley had completed just 1-of-6 passes for 5 yards.
Pike completed 21-of-28 passes for 195 yards in the first half and finished the game with 272 yards and two touchdowns.
With just over 10 minutes to play in the third quarter, senior linebacker Corey Smith intercepted a pass from Dantley and returned it 39 yards to the Syracuse 35 yard line.
The Bearcats capitalized on the turnover and five plays later, Pike hooked up with tight end Kazeem Alli for a 7-yard touchdown pass, making the score 20-3.
In the fourth quarter, DeAngelo Smith returned a punt 38 yards to the Syracuse 26 yard line. Two plays later, Jacob Ramsey took a screen pass 15 yards for a touchdown, giving the Bearcats a 30-3 lead.
After taking the Victory Bell, Keg of Nails and River City Rivalry trophy, the Bearcats had won all of their rivalry trophies this season, but the team collected the trophy they wanted the most as the clock hit 0:00 in the fourth quarter: The Big East championship trophy.
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