No. 10 Cal Poly Rallies Late, But Falls to Fresno State, 41-25

Saturday, September 7

Fresno, CA

7 pm

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Fresno State

2-0

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

Cal Poly

Fresno State

No. 10 Cal Poly Rallies Late, But Falls to Fresno State, 41-25

9/7/2013 12:00:00 AM | Football

Box Score

VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS (KSBY): PART 1 | PART 2

FRESNO, Calif. – Senior wide receiver Isaiah Burse returned two punts for touchdowns and also caught a scoring pass as Fresno State defeated No. 10 Cal Poly 41-25 in a non-conference football game Saturday night in Bulldog Stadium.

In just the second meeting between the Central California rivals since the mid-1980s, Fresno State amassed 370 yards in total offense to improve to 2-0 on the year. Cal Poly, held to just two first downs and 44 total yards in the first half before rallying in the second half behind backup quarterback Chris Brown, fell to 1-1.

Burse returned a Paul Hundley punt 61 yards late in the first quarter for his first touchdown. It was the first punt return for a touchdown by an opponent in Tim Walsh's five years as head coach at Cal Poly.

Burse gave Fresno State a 17-0 lead 28 seconds into the second quarter by catching a 15-yard pass from senior quarterback Derek Carr.

Just 30 seconds before halftime, Burse returned another Hundley punt 58 yards for his third touchdown of the game and a 34-0 Bulldog lead at the break.

"I don't think we played well on offense, and I'm not sure we coached our best game on offense," said Walsh. "Our game plan might have been a little too conservative. They did some really good things against us, and I think in the second half we came out and just said, `Let's go play. Let's go play with our stuff and see what happens.' "

Carr completed 22 of 31 passes for 205 yards and three touchdowns, one week after connecting on 52 of 73 passes for 456 yards and five scores in an overtime win over Rutgers.

Carr's favorite targets were Josh Quezada with six catches, Davante Adams with five and Burse with four.

After a lethargic first half offensively, Cal Poly erupted for 372 yards and 25 points after the intermission.

"We should've finished the game much better than we did, but you gotta give Cal Poly a ton of credit," said second-year Fresno State head coach Tim DeRuyter. "They're a good football team, well coached and played hard and they never quit. We have to do a much better job developing our depth so when we get our 2's and 3's in there, they perform much better than they did tonight."

Senior Bobby Zalud's 41-yard field goal less than two minutes into the third quarter put the Mustangs on the scoreboard, capping a 56-yard, five-play drive highlighted by Kristaan Ivory's 52-yard run around left end.

Twelve minutes later, Brown (pictured at left) hit Willie Tucker with a seven-yard touchdown pass, trimming Fresno State's lead to 41-10. Brown replaced Mustang starting signal caller Vince Moraga, who suffered a knee injury on the previous Cal Poly drive.

The Mustangs added another score two minutes into the final period on a quick 70-yard, four-play drive. Brown hit Tucker with a 50-yard pass to set up his own 22-yard touchdown run.

An 85-yard, seven-play drive was capped by a one-yard Brown run to account for the final Mustang points. Brown hit Tucker on a 39-yard pass and Cole Stanford on a 29-yarder while Ivory ran 20 yards to set up the touchdown.

"I told our team there's a lot of positive tape (from the second half)," said Walsh. We're not happy that its 41 to 25, but I'm proud of how we played in the second half. We could've folded up and got beat 68 to nothing. We fought and made it to 41 to 25 where we were actually calling timeouts to get back in the game.

"They had to put their guys back in, and I'm sure that's not what they wanted to do," Walsh added. "I give our players a lot of credit, and that's what we pride ourselves on is who we are, not just what we are. We're football players and all that, but we have good guys with great character."

The Mustangs finished with a 416-370 advantage in total yards – 172 on the ground and 244 through the air. Cal Poly ran off 54 plays in the second half after being held to just 22 plays before the break.

"Our offense started to believe, and I think you could see confidence start to build in us and that's going to be a good thing for us the rest of the year," said Walsh. "Their ones, that's a good football team. That's a legitimate FBS football team. They're one of the top 30 in the country. We aren't going to play against a team that is more athletic than that.

"I think we learned a lot about the speed of the game and what we need to do and things like that," Walsh added. "We can use this as a learning experience. I thought the momentum we created at the end probably helps, but I don't think that whatever happened in this game was going to make or break our season because I think we have too many tough guys to let that happen. I was just proud of the way we fought back."

Brown was nine of 15 for 184 yards and one touchdown while rushing for 39 yards and two more scores. Before he was injured, Moraga connected on six of 12 passes for 60 yards.

Ivory finished with 97 yards on 20 carries. Tucker was Cal Poly's top receiver with five catches for 126 yards. Freshman Cam Akins caught three passes.

Cal Poly's defensive leaders were linebacker Cameron Ontko (pictured above) with 12 tackles and Nick Dzubnar, also a linebacker, with 10 stops. Long snapper Zac Powell recovered a Fresno State fumble on a punt and the Mustangs made six tackles for lost yardage, including two by Dzubnar.

Cal Poly plays another game on the road against a Mountain West Conference foe next Saturday, visiting Colorado State in Ft. Collins. Kickoff is set for 12:30 p.m. PDT. The Mustangs also open Big Sky Conference play at Portland State on Sept. 26 before returning home to host Yale on Oct. 5.

Colorado State (0-2) fell 30-27 to Tulsa on Saturday.