Miami Beach Bowl Recap: Central Michigan Chippewas vs. Tulsa Golden Hurricane

Tulsa’s high-powered offense explodes for 581 yards of total offense as they ran away from Central Michigan, 55-10, to win the Miami Beach Bowl from inside Marlins Park on Monday night.

Both D’Angelo Brewer and James Flanders carried the ball 17 times, and both went over 100 yards in this game, 105 and 100 respectively. Tulsa was able to move the ball up and down the field at will, making life a lot easier on their defense. Dane Evans was able to find many passing lanes, and threw for 304 yards and five touchdowns on the day.

The Tulsa defense forced three Cooper Rush interceptions on the day, and gave the Chippewas fits all game long. With all the different looks they were given, CMU struggled to get the ball moving.

Cooper Rush threw for 241 yards and three interceptions in his final game as a Chippewa. Another senior, Jahray Hayes, scored the only touchdown for CMU on the day, as he scored from 13 yards out.

CMU’s defense was able to hold the Golden Hurricane to field goals every once in a while, but the offense just wasn’t able to step in and answer the scoring of the Tulsa offense. Tulsa came out of the gates strong and never looked back as they took it straight to the Chippewas.

Everyone going into this game talked about how good Tulsa’s offense is, and they certainly lived up to it, as Dane Evans found Keevan Lucas for three touchdowns on the day, one more to Josh Atkinson and another to Chris Minter. Tulsa also accomplished something that no other team has ever done before. The Golden Hurricane are the first team to feature a 3,000 yard passer (Evans), two 1,000 yard rushers (D’Angelo Brewer and James Flanders) and two 1,000 yard receivers (Lucas and Atkinson) in FBS History.

Cooper Rush finishes his CMU career with 12,894 passing yards, 11 yards shy of tying Dan LeFevour’s MAC record of 12,905 for a career. Rush had a chance to break the record as time expired in the game, but it fell incomplete.