Puget Sound rallies for 38-20 victory over Pacific to end season

No sooner had the University of Puget Sound football coach finished his brief postgame speech, the players took off for a dirty ending to their memorable Saturday.

Most of them went facefirst into the muddy “Baker Bog.”

It has been a long time since the Loggers could celebrate this type of season, and they wrapped it up with a 38-20 victory over Pacific University in Tacoma.

UPS (6-3, 5-2 in NWC) finished in sole possession of third place in the Northwest Conference — its best showing since the league was formed in 1998.

Quarterback Hans Fortune easily had his best performance in a UPS uniform, completing 27 of 40 passes for 410 yards and five touchdowns with no turnovers.

In fact, the junior from Kenmore set two single-season school marks for passing yards (2,878) and total offense (2,833).

“It is pretty cool,” Fortune said. “I am more happy we got the win than me getting the record.”

With rains pounding the grassy surface, UPS played its third home game under slippery conditions on a field that looked like a tractor drove through it by the time the game was over.

The first two games in rainy weather came against Whitworth (24-7 loss) and Pacific Lutheran (6-2 win). In those games, the Loggers totaled 489 yards and two offensive touchdowns.

Against the Boxers on Saturday, UPS exploded for 459 yards and the five Fortune touchdown passes.

“Today you could see our guys embracing (the conditions),” Loggers coach Jeff Thomas said. “The worse it got, the better we played. Every time it started raining, we played a little bit better.”

But after a Zach Teats fumble on a kickoff return, the Boxers went up 14-0 on Bronson Barretto’s 3-yard run up the middle with 8:54 left in the first quarter.

But the game changed on one play — Fortune’s 59-yard pass to Brennan Schon, who got behind the Pacific secondary to cut the Boxers’ lead in half, 14-7, near the end of the quarter.

“We need that one play to remind us, ‘Hey, our offense is pretty good.’ After that, we were lights out,” Thomas said.

“Three years ago, we probably would have stayed down 14-0. We just had to learn how to win together.”

Pacific gained 92 of its 358 yards in the first six minutes. After that, both the UPS offense and defense took over.

The Loggers took the lead for good, 21-20, on Fortune’s 67-yard touchdown strike with 4:26 remaining in the first half.

“Everything came together today,” Fortune said. “We just overcame the circumstances. It was our fourth game like this (in rainy weather), so we finally got used to playing in these crappy conditions.”

At the start of the week, Thomas knew his team would finish no worse than 5-4.

But 6-3?

“Words cannot describe it,” said Thomas, whose Loggers were picked by NWC coaches in the preseason poll to finish in last place.

“This is nice for a lot of reasons, but really nice for our seniors who were recruited off an 0-9 year.”

Linfield 38, at PLU 10: The second-ranked Wildcats scored two touchdowns in the first 4  1/2 minutes, and won for the 16th consecutive time over the Lutes at Sparks Stadium.

PLU used a little razzle-dazzle for its lone touchdown as receiver Ben Welch threw a 30-yard pass to DJ Winter at the end of the first half.

Linfield quarterback Sam Riddle threw for a pair of touchdowns and ran for another, but was picked off by PLU’s Joey Dornek and Brady Daly.

The Lutes (2-7, 2-5) finished their worst season since going 1-8 in 1963.

This story was originally published November 14, 2015 at 9:59 PM with the headline "Puget Sound rallies for 38-20 victory over Pacific to end season."