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By Bill Koch
GoBEARCATS.com
CINCINNATI - The University of Cincinnati Bearcats were their own worst enemies for most of the game, but even on a night when they committed a slew of turnovers and suffered two special teams breakdowns they were positioned to complete an improbable comeback.
The Bearcats had rallied from a 34-12 deficit, facing first-and-goal at the Temple 5-yard line when linebacker Tyler Matakevich picked off a Gunner Kiel pass in the end zone with 13 seconds remaining to preserve a 34-26 victory for the Owls in the American Athletic Conference opener for both teams Saturday night before 38,112 fans at Nippert Stadium.
In the end, UC found out what Penn State discovered last week, that this Temple football team is for real.
The Owls, who upset Penn State 27-10 last week in their season opener, broke open a close game with 21 third-quarter points, then held off a furious UC comeback to end a five-game losing streak to the Bearcats that dated to 1985.
The Bearcats contributed to their own demise with a lost fumble and four interceptions of Kiel passes - all in the second half - while the UC special teams surrendered a 100-yard kickoff return to start the second half and failed to recover an on-side kick that set up another Temple touchdown.
UC out-gained Temple, 557 yards to 296, but committed five turnovers to one for the Owls, including the game-clinching interception in the closing seconds on a pass intended for Chris Moore.
"Way too many turnovers," said UC coach Tommy Tuberville. "You're not gonna beat too many people if you do that. We dominated part of the game in terms of between the 20s, but again it's like that last drive down there, you've got to still be careful with the ball. You can't get lackadaisical and unfortunately we threw it a little bit high. It could have been caught but it was tipped. We were trying to catch it and tipped it up."
Tuberville did not make any UC players available to the media after the game, which ended close to midnight, but he had plenty to say about the Bearcats' loss.
"You've got to go out and make your own breaks," Tuberville said. "Take away the third quarter and I thought we played a pretty good football game, but you can't take away the third quarter. You've got to play for four quarters."
That fateful third quarter began with a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by Temple's Jahad Thomas, who also rushed for 193 yards on 26 carries with one touchdown. The breakdown on the kickoff coverage came a week after Tuberville lamented the Bearcats' special teams play in their season opener over Alabama A&M last week.
"We were in our lanes," Tuberville said. "The guy just made us miss. We had two missed tackles. We've got to learn to break down when you're in the open field. We've got to learn to make the guy slow down. He hit it full stride and made us miss and never stopped. It doesn't give your pursuit time to get over there.
"It was as much of them executing what they did as how well we covered it. You can't have that happen. We had a punt blocked last week and we had a kickoff return for a touchdown. It's just hard to overcome those. It really is."
UC also failed to recover a surprise on-side kick by Temple after the Owls had scored on Thomas' 56-yard run to take 17-12 lead.
By the end of the third quarter, Temple had outscored UC 21-6, the Bearcats' only points coming on an 88-yard touchdown pass from Kiel to Mekale McKay, the longest pass of Kiel's career and longest reception of McKay's.
A 35-yard field goal by Austin Jones gave Temple a 34-12 on the first play of the fourth quarter. The game appeared to be over at that point, but the Bearcats came alive. Tion Green scored from six yards out with 12:06 left to make it 34-19. After Shaq Washington caught a 2-yard touchdown pass from Kiel, it was 34-26 with 2:43 to go.
The Bearcats attempted an on-side kick but it was recovered by Matakevich, the all-conference linebacker who also had 13 tackles and one other interception. This time it was Temple that turned the ball over, with Thomas fumbling and UC's Leviticus Payne recovering to give UC one last possession at its 29 with 2:29 to play.
The Bearcats used nine plays to get to the Temple 5-yard line before Matakevich shut down the drive with the pick in the end zone.
Kiel completed 30 of 52 passes for 427 yards and two touchdowns to go with his four interceptions. He was sacked only once by a Temple defense that recorded 10 sacks last week against Penn State.
"There were several times when we just kind of threw it up for grabs and Gunner would love to have some of them back," Tuberville said. "Sometimes it's on the receiver. There was one time when he threw an interception and the receiver broke the wrong way. Those things happen.
"We've got to get to a point where we do play hard and play well and get the ball down in the red zone. I thought that was the biggest key of the game. In the first half, if we could just get one touchdown, we get them back on their heels a little bit and make them throw the ball, but we never could get any momentum and get their offense behind the 8-ball."
Instead it was the Bearcats who were forced to play behind the 8-ball for most of the game and now find themselves saddled with an early conference loss at home, a shaky situation for a UC team that was the overwhelming pick to win the conference championship in the pre-season media poll.
"These guys are resilient," Tuberville said. "They'll fight back. They know they got a chance to have a pretty good team. We can still have a great year. It probably takes the pressure off them knowing that they got this one out of the way and got beat.
"Unfortunately it happened to us at home. Now we've got an uphill battle but we'll fight back. We did last year. We'll fight back this year. We've just got to get better and understand where we're at and what we've got to do to get better."
Bill Koch covered UC Athletics for 27 years - 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer - before joining the staff of GoBEARCATS.com in January, 2015 as featured columnist. Follow him on Twitter @bkoch.