Rice Bowl: Frontiers storm back to foil Fighters, capture 1st national crown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOKYO (Jan. 3)—Even missing two of their American players, the Fujitsu Frontiers showed they had enough firepower to proclaim themselves as the mightiest in the land for the first time.

 

Gino Gordon rushed for two touchdowns and Hidetetsu Nishimura kicked four field goals as Fujitsu came from behind twice to defeat the deceptive and determined Kwansei Gakuin University Fighters 33-24 in the Rice Bowl for a first-ever national championship.

 

With injured quarterback Colby Cameron and defensive end Austin Flynn watching from the bench, the Frontiers fought off an inspired performance by Fighters quarterback Kei Saito to continue the X-League’s domination in  the Rice Bowl before the crowd of 30,361 at Tokyo Dome.

 

“It was just one of those things where you see adversity and you want to make sure that you keep going and keep doing what you’re supposed to be doing,” said Gordon, who rushed for 95 yards on 23 carries and earned the Paul Rush Award—and a year’s supply of rice—as the game’s MVP. ” I feel the team gave their best effort at that. ”

 

X-League teams have now won six straight Rice Bowls and 10 of the last 11, and lead the overall series 20-12 since the game has pitted the corporate and collegiate champions for the national title starting in 1984. For Kwansei Gakuin, making its record 10th appearance, it marked a fourth straight defeat after losing the previous three to the Obic Seagulls.

 

The Fighters were no pushovers, and kept the game close behind Saito, who completed 22 of 41 passes for 279 yards with one touchdown and one interception, while also scrambling for 39 yards.

 

“He’s an athletic guy and he ran their offense very efficiently,” said Fujitsu cornerback Al-Rilwan Adeyami, whose fourth-quarter interception set up the Frontiers’ go-ahead touchdown, an 11-yard run by Gordon.

 

“Sometimes you don’t need the best quarterback, you just need the best quarterback to run your offense. And that’s what he did. He did a very good job. They’re a very well-coached team.”

 

Also impressive was bullish running back Seiji Hashimoto, who rushed for 78 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries.

 

The Fighters, who outgained the Frontiers in total yards 454 to 297, took a 7-3 lead in the first quarter before Fujitsu came back to go ahead 20-10 heading into halftime.

 

The Fighters responded with two third-quarter touchdowns to lead 24-23, and had a chance to pad the lead after getting the ball back near midfield with Kodai Okamoto’s interception on the third play of the fourth quarter.

 

But the Frontiers forced a turnover of their own to turn the tide.  The Fighters, who did not have a traditional punt all game, went for it on 4th-and-3 at the Fujitsu 44. Saito, scrambling away from pressure, unleashed an underthrown pass right to Adeyami, who returned the ball to the KGU 17.

 

“I was in a zone and he was rolling out.,” Adeyami said. “I saw that that he was losing depth and I figured, why try to go up to him when he’s 15 yards away from me? And I saw two other guys chasing him to the sideline. I thought if he could get to the sideline, he might try to dump it. That’s what he tried to do and fortunately for me, I was in the right position.”

 

Facing 3rd-and-3 at the 11, Gordon deked one would-be tackler and zipped into the end zone to put Fujitsu up 30-24 at 2:33 into the fourth quarter, still plenty of time for the collegians to stage a comeback.

 

“It was lot more physical than I thought it would be,” said Gordon, who was also named the MVP of Fujitsu’s 44-10 victory over the IBM BigBlue in the Japan X Bowl, which gave the Frontiers their first-ever league title.

 

“When you say you’re going to play a college team, you don’t expect them to be hitting as hard as they did. They flew around really well. There were a couple of times when they rung my bell a little bit.”

 

On the ensuing series, Kwansei Gakuin, which continually used misdirection and even scored one touchdown on a pass resembling a basketball jump shot, was successful on a fake punt but failed on a second, giving the Frontiers the ball back at their own 49 with 8:31 left.

 

Gordon ran six straight times, starting with a 20-yard run, to help run off time and set up a 33-yard field goal by Nishimura with 4:41 left. It was the shortest field goal of the day for Nishimura, who was successful from 41, 47 and 48 yards, although he missed a 43-yarder later in the game.

 

The Frontiers put the final nail in the coffin when linebacker Shohei Takeuchi nailed Saito for an 18-yard loss on fourth down, the only sack Fujitsu recorded against the slippery senior QB.

 

As Fujitsu attempted to run out the clock, Gordon was stopped for a 9-yard loss, which became significant in that it denied him a 100-yard game.

 

“That is too bad,” he said when shown the stats. “That just reinstates to me that you don’t ever reverse field like that…That’s just another thing that I can work on. Obviously we’re going to see a lot of things that we can work on on film. And we can figure it out and get better from them, and that’s the biggest thing, that we constantly improve.”

 

Gordon revealed after the game that Adeyami had been sick all week with a stomach flu, and could very well have joined his two compatriots on the sidelines. Cameron suffered a dislocated shoulder in the victory over IBM and did not suit up, while Flynn injured his back against IBM and was in uniform, but was only going to see action in an emergency.

 

“He’s pretty sick, and he showed up when he had to, which is really nice,” Gordon said of Adeyami. “The Americans had a rough day.”

 

Keiya Hiramoto, who finished off the Japan X Bowl win, did a solid job as Cameron’s replacement, completing 15 of 27 passes for 147 yards and one touchdown, with two interceptions. Sei Kyo caught six passes for 79 yards.

 

“No matter who comes in at any position, we knew he could execute,” said Cameron, whose older brother, Cleveland Browns tight end Jordan Cameron, came to Tokyo to see the game. “All season, if one guy goes down, another guy picks it up. It’s amazing, I’m so happy.”

 

On the opening series of the game, Kwansei Gakuin gave an indication of what was to lie ahead with a pair of inside reverses by wide receiver Takato Kido that resulted in good gains. Facing fourth down, Saito lined up in the shotgun formation, then kicked the ball himself for what would be the Fighters’ only punt of the game.

 

The Fighters had a chance to strike first on the next possession. Going for it on 4th-and-2 at the Fujitsu 29, Kido took an inside reverse, then stopped to pass to a wide open Saito downfield. But he overthrew him.

 

After Fujitsu came back with Nishimura’s first field goal of the day, Kido again was involved in some skullduggery, and this time it worked. Saito engineered a nine-play, 64-yard drive that ended with Kido again taking the handoff and, as he got to the left end, flipped the ball basketball-style to Gota Kinoshita for a 5-yard touchdown pass and a 7-3 lead.

 

Gordon scored on a 2-yard run early in the second quarter in a drive set up by the first of two long kickoff returns by Teruaki Clark Nakamura, who also caught a touchdown pass.

 

The two teams then traded field goals, with the 46-yarder by Kwansei Gakuin’s Junya Miwa going through after bouncing off the left upright to leave Fujitsu with a 13-10 lead.

 

With 3:35 left in the half,  Hiramoto marched the Frontiers 68 yards to a touchdown and 20-10 lead, connecting on a 1-yard pass to Nakamura with :14 left on the clock. The big plays of the drive were a 21-yard pass to Junpei Yoshimoto and a 17-yard run by Gordon that put the ball on the 1.

 

On the Fighters’ first drive of the second half, they drove from the 24 to the Frontiers 1, where they attempted what Adeyami termed “the Michael Jordan pass” twice, but failed on both.

 

First, as he dove over the middle, running back Hashimoto sent his pass out of the reach of tight end Hiroki Matsushima. Saito then tried the same play and also missed his target. On fourth down, linebacker Shoichi Suzuki stopped Hashimoto short of the goal line.

 

“It worked once, there was twice where it should have worked,” Adeyami said. “We gave up a few plays, which is uncharacteristic of us for how well we’ve played all year.”

 

But Kwansei Gakuin soon got the ball back, as Hiramoto was intercepted by defensive back Takumi Ogura, who returned it to the Fujitsu 24. Four plays later, Hashimoto took the more traditional route into the end zone, knifing up the middle from the 1 to cut the Frontiers’ lead to 20-17.

 

Another long kickoff return by Nakamura set up Nishimura’s 48-yard field goal, only to see Kido take a screen pass 23 yards for a touchdown to give the Fighters a 24-23 lead as the third quarter ended.

 

“They had a lot of trick plays going on,” Gordon said. “They just called it at the right time. They were able to keep the game really close and we only able to pull away at the end.”

 

—Ken Marantz for the X-League