By The Daily Item
LEWISBURG -- History really does repeat itself, especially for the Bucknell football team.
C.J. Hopson ran for a career-high 189 yards and the Bison dominated the time of possession to upset No. 13 Holy Cross 23-17 on Saturday afternoon at Christy Mathewson-Memorial Stadium.
The win snapped a five-game losing streak for Bucknell (4-7, 2-4 Patriot League), which won its final game for the sixth time in the last seven years.
Saturday's contest was eerily similar to two years ago when Bucknell went into its final game of the campaign against Fordham, a ranked team that had already clinched the league title, and defeated the Rams 38-24 to snap a five-game losing streak.
Bucknell piled up a season-high 321 rushing yards. Hopson, who also rushed for better than 100 yards last week at Colgate, led the way on the ground, but Ryan Smith (63 yards) and Tyler Smith (58) added 121 yards to the team total. Tyler Smith added the first two rushing touchdowns of his career.
On defense, the Bison limited Holy Cross quarterback Dominic Randolph to 271 yards and just one touchdown, his lowest total of the season. Additionally, the Crusaders 17 points were a season-low figure.
Bucknell never trailed in the contest.
The Bison led 17-10 late in the third quarter following a 30-yard field goal by Drew Orth, his fifth of the season. However, Randolph completed seven consecutive passes on Holy Cross' ensuing drive to set up a game-tying two-yard touchdown run by freshman Eddie Houghton with 11:34 left.
Bucknell took possession with 5:29 remaining at their own 20-yard line and the score tied at 17-17. A 14-yard pass along the right sideline to Cale Cadman and a 13-yard rush by Hopson brought the Bison to midfield. Hopson then broke through the right side of the line for a 40-yard scramble, putting the Bison inside the 10-yard line with less than two minutes to play. The next play, Tyler Smith ran in for his second score to put Bucknell up 23-17. A bad snap caused Orth to miss the extra point, giving Holy Cross a chance to win the game on its final drive.
Randolph, who had thrown for more than 3,000 yards and 30 touchdowns entering the contest, was sacked and threw six incompletions on the drive. He did tally 25 yards rushing and completed a 13-yard pass to Santana on a fourth-and-10 to advance the Crusaders to the Bucknell 24.
With the win, the Bison defeated Holy Cross for the first time since 2004. They also scored more than 20 points for the first time since the second game of the season, a 26-23 win over Robert Morris at Christy Mathewson-Memorial Stadium.
