Late Lions rally falls short in OBU loss

The Texas A&M University-Commerce Lions gave their home fans all the drama they could handle during Thursday's 2011 home opener, but unfortunately they could not deliver the one thing that mattered most. The Lions (0-3) failed to recover an onside kick with under a minute to play, which allowed Ouachita Baptist (3-0) to remain unbeaten and escape Memorial Stadium with a 39-33 victory.

Sophomore safety Joel Wren notched a career-high 13 tackles in the contest, and felt the Lions had a great chance to pull off an epic comeback.

"There was a lot of fighting in the pile for that ball, it went back and forth a few times," Wren said. "I felt like if we'd gotten the ball back, the offense would've definitely punched it in."

Ouachita Baptist took a 17-13 lead into halftime, but opened up the lead to 31-13 in the third quarter, riding the arm and legs of quarterback Casey Cooper, who passed for 142 yards and rushed for 200 more. The Lions closed the gap to 31-26 in the fourth period, but Cooper led the Tigers on a 14-play drive lasting more than seven minutes that left the Lions with a huge deficit to clear with little time remaining. Wren said the Lions' inability to make a defensive stand was again due to a lack of execution.

"Coach put us in the best position to make plays," Wren said. "We had the right play call every time, we just busted assignments and didn't execute."

Lions quarterback Yogi Gallegos passed for 345 yards and three touchdowns, but was also picked off twice. Taylor Fore led the receiving corps with 92 yards on 10 grabs, including a touchdown in the first quarter. Cory Whitfield had 11 tackles despite being banged-up during the contest.

The Tigers opened the scoring with a 10-play drive, capped off by Daniel McGee's 3-yard run. Jason Fowler booted the PAT for a 7-0 advantage. Gallegos led the Lions down the field to tie the game up, connecting with Fore on an 8-yard pass. Jacob O'Neil kicked the extra point to tie the game at 7-7.

The two teams traded field goals before Cooper found Brett Reece for a 32-yard touchdown pass to make it 17-10 just before halftime. But Gallegos again marched the Lions down the field, and O'Neil knocked home his second field goal of the night to trim the OBU lead to 17-13 after two periods.

Cooper led the charge in the third quarter, scoring on runs of 45 and 19 yards to open the lead to 31-13. The Tigers gained 175 yards of offense in the quarter while the Lions sputtered when they had the ball. Gallegos found Tyler Rawlings for a 25-yard touchdown early in the fourth to start the rally, which took a serious turn when Marlin Terrell returned a blocked field goal 68 yards to make it 31-26 with 9:37 to play.

But Cooper led the Tigers on a clock-killing drive and handed the ball to McGee for another touchdown run. Gallegos tossed the ball downfield in a hurry and dumped a pass to Marcus Graham for a 19-yard score, but after the officials cleared out the pile attempting to recover the ensuing onside kick, OBU came up with possession and ran out the clock to preserve the win. Gallegos pointed out the negative areas of play, but also made a very positive observation.

"I think we lost this game, it's evident we did some things to ourselves that hurt us pretty bad tonight," Gallegos said. "But I feel really good about how we stepped up when the pressure was on."

The Lions will return to LSC play on Oct. 1 when they hit the road to face Texas A&M-Kingsville. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m.