COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) \u2014 Miami brought a nasty defense into Texas A&M on Saturday to down the seventh-seeded Aggies in the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n
The No. 10 seed Hurricanes forced Marcel Reed into three turnovers and sacked him seven times in the 10-3 victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe defense was off the charts the entire day,\u201d coach Mario Cristobal said.<\/p>\n They move on to face No. 2 Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl on New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n Texas A&M had a chance to tie it after freshman Malachi Toney\u2019s 11-yard touchdown reception with less than two minutes left.<\/p>\n The Aggies drove down the field and had a first down at the 5. But Miami (11-2) forced consecutive incompletions before fellow freshman Bryce Fitzgerald leapt in the end zone to grab his second interception of the day to secure the win.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the lights come on, certain guys just kind of have it. He\u2019s that guy,\u201d Cristobal said. \u201cWhen the lights come on, he knows what to do, how to do it, and there\u2019s no flinch in that guy at all. You don\u2019t sense any type of freshman reservation from him.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hurricanes stifled Texas A&M\u2019s powerful offense, which entered the game averaging 36.3 points a game. Along with the seven sacks of Reed, they flushed him out of the pocket and forced him to try to make tough throws again and again. He was 25 of 39 for 257 yards but was unable to get the Aggies in the end zone for the first time this season.<\/p>\n \u201cJust trying to make sure he was uncomfortable and trying to not give the same coverage every time… and I thought our guys did a really good job of handling that all day,\u201d defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman said. <\/p>\n They also limited Texas A&M to 89 yards rushing on 35 carries with the team\u2019s longest run coming on an 11-yard scramble by Reed.<\/p>\n Defensive end Rueben Bain Jr., the ACC Defensive Player of the Year, had four tackles for loss and three sacks to lead Miami\u2019s formidable pass rush. The junior also blocked a field goal in the second quarter to help the \u2019Canes shut out Texas A&M before halftime.<\/p>\n Bain credited Hetherman, who is in his first year at the school, for the team\u2019s defensive success Saturday.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s crazy for us to win this game in this kind of way,\u201d Bain said. \u201cFrom the first snap to the last, the defense came to play, and that\u2019s the way it\u2019s going to be, especially when you\u2019ve got somebody like coach Hetherman, somebody like that, coaching us every play just to come out and give our best.\u201d<\/p>\n Toney\u2019s big play was made possible by a defensive stand after he fumbled the ball on the previous possession. He made a reception, but Dalton Brooks knocked the ball out and Daymion Sanford recovered it on the Texas A&M 47 with about seven minutes to go.<\/p>\n The Hurricanes got the ball back when Bain sacked Reed on two of three plays on the ensuing drive to force a punt.<\/p>\n Hetherman talked about the growth of the defense that has allowed the group to improve throughout the season.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that defense is connected, and now they want to play for one another, they want to go out and compete every single series,\u201d Hetherman said. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to let themselves down.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a>. AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) \u2014 Miami brought a nasty defense into Texas A&M on Saturday to down the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49094,111,143,49114,42502,1882,28,57,30587,11323,7122,123,125,5079,7118,124,28624,10154,110,5537,10253,42503,21682],"class_list":["post-91181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-bryce-fitzgerald","tag-college-sports","tag-college-football","tag-corey-hetherman","tag-cotton-bowl-game","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-football","tag-local-news-for-apple","tag-marcel-reed","tag-mario-cristobal","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-hurricanes","tag-miami-hurricanes-football","tag-miami-news","tag-oh-state-wire","tag-ohio","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-texas-am-aggies","tag-texas-am-aggies-football","tag-tx-state-wire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}