Portland State University Athletics

Boxscore – HTM | PDF
 
Portland, OR - Fourteenth-ranked Weber State, co-leader in the Big Sky Conference standings, used a 35-point explosion in the second quarter to drop Portland State 63-17 at Providence Park in the last Viking home game of a difficult season.
 
Twenty-three Viking seniors said goodbye to 3,792 PSU fans in the last game of their careers, which included a trip to the FCS playoffs in 2015.
 
The Vikings, 0-10, finish the season next Saturday at 3 p.m. at Eastern Washington. The game will be televised on Root Sports.
 
The Wildcats dropped the hammer early and often in the first half and scored all but the first time they touched the ball to run up a 49-3 lead. A 35-point second quarter buried the Vikings for good.
 
An obscure statistic will be that the winless Vikings scored first. Freshman quarterback Davis Alexander, who earned his spurs a week earlier in a narrow loss at Cal Poly, drove the Vikings on their first possession from their own 11 to the Weber State 24, after which Graycen Kennedy hammered a 41-yard field goal for a 3-0 Viking lead.
 
After that, the deluge. The Wildcats got it all back and four more when Rashid Shaheed took the ensuing kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown.
 
The Vikings drove to a missed field goal, and were never seen again. Continual Weber State blitzes had the freshman quarterback on the run the rest of the game.
 
The Wildcats drove 80 yards to take a 14-3 lead into the second quarter.
 
Then it all fell apart for Portland State. The Wildcats went 65 yards in just four plays for a 21-3 lead, then 67 in 8 to go up 28-3. After a PSU punt to the Weber State 40, Wildcat quarterback Stefan Cantwell cranked up and launched a 60-yard post-pattern bomb to Shaheed for yet another touchdown.
 
The Vikings fumbled the ensuing kickoff away and Weber State needed just three plays to go the 28 yards to make it 42-3.
 
PSU special teams broke down one last time in the quarter when punter Hayden Cowden mishandled the snap in his own end zone and only ran it back out to the Viking 20. The Wildcats ran the ball five straight times to go into the locker room with the 49-3 lead.
 
PSU finally hit back with 9:21 left in the third quarter when Alexander, on the run gain, fired a perfect 30-yard strike right along the right stripe of the end zone to a diving Trent Riley for a touchdown.
 
But Weber State equalized that with 10:04 left in the game when Kevin Smith took a simple pitch around left end and went 75 yards untouched for Weber's last score of the day.
 
The Vikings had one more swing left. They used it to drive 53 yards in seven plays with 7:23 left in the game. Alexander went over from a yard out after a fake into the line.
 
PSU matched Weber State 14-14 in the second half, but it was the first half that was the Vikings' undoing.
 
The Wildcats rolled up 421 rushing yards, 143 by Smith and 103 by David Jones. They added 162 passing yards for a 583-yard offensive day.
 
Despite the constant harassment by Weber State blitzes, Alexander hit 24 of 44 passes without an interception for 370 yards. He threw for big gains of 41 yards to Darnell Adams, 30 to Trent Riley and 28 to Charlie Taumopeau.
 
Adams caught six balls for 137 yards; Riley also caught six for 93 more.
 
Even with Wildcats chasing him all over the field, Alexander was on the plus side with a team-leading 24 yards and a rushing touchdown.