The 19th-ranked Houston Cougars needed the kind of finish that turns a game inside out on October 17, 1970, and they got it twice over in a 19-16 win over Oregon State in the Astrodome.
Houston was staring at a 7-0 deficit late in the first half when the Beavers had the ball, no timeouts left for the Cougars and the clock bleeding down. Then Kent Branstetter blew up an outside pitch for a five-yard loss on second down, and Oregon State’s odd decision to use a timeout with under a minute remaining put the Beavers in a 3rd-and-12 situation instead of letting the half disappear. Houston stopped them there, and what happened next changed everything.
Oregon State lined up to punt with less than 20 seconds left. The Houston wedge pushed the line backward, the kick got deflected by one of the Beavers’ own linemen, and the ball nearly landed back in the punter’s hands.
Instead, it dropped into the arms of Frank Ditta, who bounced off a tackle and sprinted 52 yards for a touchdown with five seconds left in the half. The conversion failed, but Houston had slashed the deficit to 7-6.
The Cougars found the end zone just three plays into the third quarter, though they again came up short on the two-point try. Even then, Oregon State - a 18-point underdog - kept pounding away.
The Beavers ran 88 plays, 71 of them on the ground, and Houston’s defense had to grind to control it. The Cougars held Oregon State to three second-half field goals, including a 47-yarder that stood as a Beaver record.
Houston still carried a 12-10 lead into the fourth quarter before the game took another twist. Moon Mullins fumbled on a pitch, Oregon State recovered, and after the play Mullins and Beaver defensive lineman Mark Dipple were disqualified for throwing punches. Oregon State cashed in with a field goal on the next drive to move ahead 13-12, then tacked on another two possessions later to stretch the margin to 16-12.
That left Terry Peel, in for Mullins, with one final drive to rescue the Cougars. He started it by hitting Elmo Wright for 17 yards, then found Earl Thomas for nine more two plays later. After a no-gain play on third down, Peel kept it himself on fourth-and-one and got the first down.
Houston still had work to do, and Oregon State made it harder by drawing a pass interference call with less than two minutes remaining. Two plays later, on third-and-11, Peel went back to Wright for a 22-yard touchdown that put the Cougars on top for good. Carlos Lopez added the extra point, and Houston escaped 19-16.
“They just carried it to you,” Bill Yeoman said of Oregon State. “Boy, did they ever come to play.”
“I’m sick we lost, because we deserved to win,” said Oregon State coach Demosthenes Andrecopoulos. “They did everything I asked them to do.”
The box score told the same story of a game hanging on by a thread: before that final Houston drive, the Cougars had completed just 1 of 16 passes and turned the ball over four times. Even so, the punches, the punt and the Peel carried Houston through, with heroics at the end of both halves deciding the night.
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