As San Diego receivers coach Steve Mooshagian walked into the locker room after Saturday's game, the security guard watching the door told him, "good game." Mooshagian thanked her and then said under his breath, "That makes two I've lost to them like that." Mooshagian spent the previous four years as Sacramento State's head coach. He lost his first Causeway Classic when an undersized quarterback named Jon Barragan led an improbable touchdown drive to steal a victory at Hornet Stadium. This was my first year covering the team. My real memory of that night is standing in front of the Cantina in Davis as a fairly celebratory (and yes, that's a euphemism) Chris Kelly just repeated "Aggie Pride" to me over and over again.
I think there's something about those sorts of crazy sports moments that makes us reach back into our personal history books to try and compare them. Brandon Rice said after the game he felt a little like "Ryan Blaise" after the winning catch. He was referring to the receiver that made the final catch in a win over Stanford in 2005 that some Aggie fans might vaguely remember.
This wasn't Matt Engle's first gamewinning drive. In high school Engle said he and his El Segundo team went 75 yards in 40 seconds to rally past Inglewood. In fact, before he went onto the field for the final drive, he shared a moment with high school and college teammate Jeff Fucci.
"Inglewood?" Engle said he said to Fucci
"Yeah, let's go do it," he said Fucci responded.
And actually, his sister was right there too. She had come down to the front row to deliver a message.
"Inglewood," she called down to him from the stands, "keep the faith."
So it was a nice moment.
Clearly this was a fairly thrilling end to what was not all that great a year. UC Davis looks pretty stocked offensively, but clearly has a number of questions to answer on defense and special teams. We'll get into that in the coming days as we wrap up the season.
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