MCGILL: Season ends with Camellia Bowl loss

HerdZone.com

Marshall's 2020 season came to an end with three consecutive losses – the regular season finale, Conference USA championship game and Friday's Camellia Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama.

A stocking full of coal sounds like a better fate on a Christmas Day than that.

The Thundering Herd fell to Buffalo, 17-10, to conclude the season at 7-3. Marshall held one of the nation's top scoring teams to 30 points below their season average but could not muster enough offensively to snap the skid. After opening with seven consecutive games of 300 yards of total offense or more, the Herd failed to reach that mark in any of the final three games – defeats to Rice and UAB at home, and then at the Camellia Bowl in front of an ESPN audience on Friday.

"The last three games we did not do well offensively," Marshall head coach Doc Holliday said. "That's on the coaches and myself, not the players. This year don't ever blame the players for anything that's happened. These kids have gone above and beyond everything they possibly had to do. At the end of the day, it didn't work out for us."

Marshall opened the season with seven consecutive wins, surging to No. 15 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll for the first time since 1999 and earning a College Football Playoff ranking in multiple weeks for the first time in school history. That start propelled Holliday to numerous individual honors, including the American Football Coaches Association Region 4 Coach of the Year and the Conference USA Coach of the Year. Holliday is a finalist for the AFCA National Coach of the Year award.

Likewise, the Herd players collected several top honors, too. Marshall led C-USA with 12 all-conference selections, including a league-high nine first team honorees. In addition to Holliday's C-USA honor, senior linebacker Tavante Beckett was named the conference's Defensive Player of the Year and first-year starting quarterback Grant Wells was named the C-USA Freshman of the Year.

But after defeating Middle Tennessee, 42-14, on Nov. 14, the Herd's momentum stalled during a three-week hiatus. Marshall returned to the field Dec. 5 and lost to Rice. In that game, the Herd offense threw five interceptions and generated a season-low 245 yards of offense. In the final three games combined, the Marshall offense produced 23 points in 12 quarters – three touchdowns and a field goal.

Friday afternoon, the Marshall offense managed 248 yards of offense.

"Obviously, we didn't get done when we had to. Give credit to Buffalo," Holliday said. "They did a nice job. Offensively, we just didn't get it done."

That offensive performance squandered an impressive display on the defensive side of the ball. Buffalo entered Friday's game with the No. 1 rushing offense in college football and the No. 3 scoring offense – averaging more than 300 rushing yards and 47 points per game. But the Bulls scored only 17 points against the Herd, the nation's No. 1 scoring defense. Buffalo's final score came with 1:09 left of the fourth quarter when running back Kevin Marks scored from 2 yards out as the Herd defense allowed him to walk into the end zone in order to give the offense a chance to pull off the comeback.

Marshall countered and reached the red zone with a chance to tie, but Wells was sacked for a 9-yard los on second down and then again on fourth down to seal the game for the Bulls.

For the Herd, junior running back Sheldon Evans set a career-high for rushing yards with 79 and sophomore receiver Corey Gammage hauled in a career-high 88 receiving yards.

Defensively, senior safety Nazeeh Johnson recorded a game-high 11 tackles and snagged his fifth career interception. Junior linebacker Abraham Beauplan had 10 tackles and two tackles for a loss – both career highs.

The Marshall coaches and players will now disperse after an arduous seven-month journey. The program's student-athletes returned to campus on May 20 to begin coronavirus protocol in an attempt to play this season. Marshall played 10 games across 18 weekends, enduring a pair of three-week stretches without a game. The entire non-conference schedule was changed, as games against East Carolina, Pitt, Ohio and Boise State were replaced with Eastern Kentucky, Appalachian State and UMass. In C-USA play, Marshall had games against FIU, Charlotte and Old Dominion canceled, and the game against Rice was played in December after originally being scheduled for October.

"These kids have been on campus for seven months," Holliday said. "We hit a wall a little bit there at the end. Is that because we've been on campus for seven months? I don't know. Obviously, we didn't play well enough at the end of the season."

Chuck McGill is the Assistant Athletic Director for Fan/Donor Engagement and Communications at Marshall University and an eight-time winner of the National Sports Media Association West Virginia Sportswriter of the Year award. In addition to HerdZone.com's Word on the Herd, McGill is the editor of Thundering Herd Illustrated, Marshall's official athletics publication. Follow him on Twitter (@chuckmcgill) and Instagram (wordontheherd).

Team Stats

Grant Wells

Players Mentioned

Abraham Beauplan

Tavante Beckett

Sheldon Evans

Corey Gammage

Nazeeh Johnson

Grant Wells

Marshall University Athletics