After big Thanksgiving Day win, Fresno State Bulldogs need help from dreaded rival

Fresno State took care of business on Thanksgiving Day, playing with precision, with purpose and even with some playfulness in a 40-9 wipeout of San Jose State at CEFCU Stadium, and it didn’t take long before the reality of its predicament grabbed hold of the Bulldogs.

To reach the Mountain West championship game for the fifth time since the conference went to divisional play in 2013, they will need the dreaded rival Boise State to beat San Diego State on Friday morning, bright and early at 9 a.m., and hang a second conference loss on the Aztecs.

Fresno State, 9-3 and 6-2 in the Mountain West, is just behind San Diego State in the West division standings. If the Broncos beat the Aztecs, both will be 6-2 and the Bulldogs will win the division via a head-to-head tiebreaker, having beaten San Diego State 30-20 at the end of October.

The waiting game just is what it is for the Bulldogs, who lost control of their destiny in the division race when losing to Boise State, the team it now needs to have a big game against the Aztecs.

Wideout Jalen Cropper, who scored on a 2-yard touchdown run and a perfectly-executed 29-yard double reverse screen pass, had no qualms about it at all. He was all in.

“I feel like I’ve been a Boise fan since I was born,” he said. ”I’ll definitely be watching that game. Boise definitely gained another fan tonight.”

His teammates obviously were on board, as well, even if they couldn’t quite put it into words.

“Man, it feels so weird,” right tackle Alex Akingbulu said. “It feels weird, but I will be at home cheering my butt off for … I don’t even want to say the name. Just know I will be cheering for that team over there. I hope they have a great game. This is the one time I hope they have a great game.”

“It’s going to be hard,” running back Jordan Mims said. “We’re going to obviously be big fans for tomorrow. But, you know, we took care of business today and we have to wait and see.”

The Bulldogs did that, and will hit that next game on a roll on both sides of the football and on special teams whether it is in the conference championship game or their bowl game.

Boise State can put Bulldogs in title game

“I think No. 1, we’re going to celebrate every win that we have playing college football,” coach Kalen DeBoer said. “It’s too hard. There’s too much work that goes into it, so first and foremost, in the locker room, it’s all about us just celebrating. We have right now a lot of positive vibes going on so we want that to carry over to (Friday) morning.

“It’s hard, because it’s out of our control. But everything that was in our control here going into this weekend, we’ve taken care of and did it in a great way. I’m proud of the guys. We have some things that need to work out, but if we get that opportunity, look out.”

The Spartans, who were playing to become bowl eligible but never were close, could attest to that.

Fresno State bludgeoned the Spartans’ offense, limiting them to 60 yards rushing and 320 total. San Jose State was in the red zone five times and came away with just three field goals. The Bulldogs were without two key pieces up the middle in injured linebacker Tyson Maeva and tackle Leonard Payne, but Malachi Langley and Tyler Mello picked up at that linebacker spot and Evan Bennett and Ryan Boehm did the same at tackle.

“Oh, man, the whole D-line was going crazy today,” said defensive end David Perales, who had four tackles including 1.5 sacks. “Kevin (Atkins), Ryan, (Arron) Mosby. Even the linebackers were going crazy, man.

“We were just super excited to get the opportunity to play in the Mountain West (championship game), so we had to do our part, and we’ll see what happens (Friday).”

Boehm, a grad transfer from Cal Poly, had one of the big early plays in the game, pressuring San Jose State quarterback Nick Starkel into an errant throw from the end zone. Starkel was penalized for intentional grounding, the result a safety for the Bulldogs’ defense and a 9-3 lead.

Bulldogs dominated the line of scrimmage

The Bulldogs lost a fumble on their next series but scored three touchdowns and one field goal on their next four, with two scores on each side of halftime, to essentially put the football game away.

Quarterback Jake Haener, with a huge assist from a banged-up offensive line, provided the precision in hitting 27 of 36 passes for 343 yards and touchdowns of 6 yards to tight end Juan Rodriguez, 45 yards to Mims, 29 yards to Cropper, and 13 yards to running back Ronnie Rivers.

That line didn’t allow a single sack and only one quarterback hurry to a defense with the reigning Mountain West defensive player of the year in All-American Cade Hall and one of the tackle for loss leaders in the conference in Viliami Fehoko coming off the edge.

Haener also played a part in the playfulness, that double-reverse pass. Fresno State worked on that play on the practice field for the past two weeks, with mixed results. But it went off without incident on Thursday, the football going from Haener to Cropper sweeping right and then to wideout Zane Pope coming back left, to Haener waiting between the hash marks and then back to Cropper to the right behind a wall of blockers.

“We repped that play a lot this week,” Cropper said. “I actually didn’t know we were going to run it. I didn’t feel like we were going to run it. But we got into the red zone, coach called the play and everyone executed.

“When I caught the ball, I saw the whole offensive line just running, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I have to score on this one.’ We were able to get into the end zone, and the energy on the sideline it’s like no other. Just seeing everybody happy, jumping up and down on the sideline, it’s definitely a good feeling.”

The Bulldogs thoroughly dismantled the Spartans, who finished 5-7 and 3-5, and made off with the Valley Trophy. They are hoping it is not the last one they will play for this season.

“We want all the trophies, and there’s really only one left that we want, and that’s the conference trophy,” DeBoer said. “It just means a lot. It’s a lot of pride, I know, for our university. This rivalry between us and San Jose State has gone on for a long time, and there have been some crazy games that have been played.

“But now that there’s a trophy tied to it and we get to have that in our possession, we hopefully have a team meeting at 7 o’clock Saturday night, and that thing is going to be front and center. We’re going to celebrate that for a moment before hopefully, we get to celebrate moving on and getting a chance to play another football game.”