It wasn’t exactly a high scoring game (in fact, it was one of the lowest scoring Liberty Bowl games ever), but a 10-3 win is a win nonetheless. And if you ask coach Sylvester Croom he’d probably say it was good enough.

Under the guidance of the Southeastern Conference coach of the year, the Bulldogs scored late, but not too late.

Anthony Dixon scored on a 1-yard run with 1:54 remaining, Derek Pegues had two interceptions and in the process Mississippi State was successful in keeping Central Florida’s Kevin Smith from breaking the single-season rushing record.

Booyah!

The Bulldogs held the Knights to 219 yards and forced four turnovers.

TCU quarterback Andy Dalton ran for a touchdown and receiver Justin Watts had the game’s first score to help TCU to a sweet 20-13 win over Houston on Friday night in the Texas Bowl at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas.

The win is TCU’s third consecutive Bowl Game victory. Looks like the losing streak for the Houston Cougars continues. (This one makes it eight. Yikes.) Dalton went 21-of-30 passes for 249 yards with one interception and was named Texas Bowl MVP.

“We knew we had a great game plan going in, we just had to go out there and execute,” Dalton said. “The win didn’t come as a shock to us. We knew we could go out there and play. We just needed to get it done, and we did.”

Attendance of 62,097 set a record total for a Bowl Game played at Reliant Stadium.

How important is this game to Penn State head coach Joe Paterno? Well, it’s his 500th game and this is his 42 year coaching. At 81, you’d think this might be his last kick at the can. Winning the Alamo Bowl would be a nice finishing touch to a very long and successful career.

The Penn State Nittany Lions are 44th in the nation in scoring offense (30.8 points a game), 33rd in rushing offense (187.4 yards a game), 69th in passing offense (211.6 yards a game) and 53rd in total offense (399.0 yards a game). They are eighth in the nation in scoring defense (17.6 points a game), seventh in rushing defense (87.9 yards a game), 53rd in passing defense (218.7 yards a game) and ninth in total defense (306.6 yards a game).

Texas A&M, on the other hand, has had their share of struggles over the past season and have only won two of their last nine bowl games.

Some teams are all about the second half. Take Wake Forest, for example. In Saturday’s game against Connecticut the Demon Deacons came out strong in the second half of the game to score 24 points and win the Meineke Bowl in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Josh Adams ran for a 38-yard touchdown and Riley Skinner passed to John Tereshinski for a 20-yard score in the third to give Wake Forest a 14-10 lead. Sam Swank’s 43-yard field goal early in the fourth made it 17-10 and Andrews put the in the final minute of the game with a 9-yard touchdown in the game’s final minute. Skinner passed for 268 yards on the game. Kenneth Moore caught 11 passes for 112 yards and was voted MVP.

“Today’s game was a homecoming for me,” said Moore. “I just wanted to come out and have a great game. My teammates came out in the second half and played well. They did not play bad the first half, we were just able to make a couple of big plays (in the second half) that we were able to capitalize on.”

AT&T Park in San Francisco, California is home to the Emerald Bowl. This year’s winner, Oregon State, beat Maryland by a score of 21-14 in front of just over 48,000 fans on Friday night. Yvenson Bernard rushed for 177 yards and a touchdown in his final college game (and had 38 carries to finish as the second-leading rusher in school history) and James Rodgers rushed for 115 yards. This is the Beavers fourth consecutive Bowl Game win under coach Mike Riley.

“I always said I wouldn’t want to run against our defense, and you just saw why,” Bernard said. “I don’t really worry about the records and all that. I just wanted to leave this program with a win, and I think we all did a great job, offensively and defensively.”

With a 24-21 win over Michigan State on Friday night at the Champs Sports Bowl, the Boston College Eagles extend their Bowl Game winning streak to eight. BC safety Jamie Silva had two interceptions and was named MVP of the game. QB Matt Ryan threw for three touchdown passes and completed 22 of 47 passes on 249 yards.

“We wanted to take some chances deep against their corners,” Ryan said. “They were bringing pressure all night and had a bunch of guys up in the box, so we wanted to take advantage of the 1-on-1 coverage. We felt it was a good matchup for us.”

Jamaal Charles ran for 161 yards and a pair of touchdowns, as the Texas Longhorns beat Arizona State 52-34 Wednesday night in San Diego to take the 2007 Holiday Bowl.

Texas QB Colt McCoy completed 21-of-31 passes for 174 yards with a TD, and also rushed for 84 yards and a score for Texas (10-3), which has won six of its last seven bowl games. Rudy Carpenter connected on 18-of-36 passes for 187 yards with two scores and a pair of interceptions for Arizona State.

“Tonight things clicked for us,” McCoy said. “The season has been long, but enjoyable.”

Purdue QB Curtis Painter named MVP

In front of 60,624 (mostly CMU) fans at Ford Field on Wednesday night, Purdue triumphed over Central Michigan by a field goal. Purdue QB Curtis Painter, who was named MVP of the game, set a Purdue and Motor City Bowl record by throwing for 546 yards.

“It’s big for us to get a win here after losing our last three games,” Painter told reporters, whose passing total ranked third in a bowl game. “It feels good to get all of the statistics, but the best statistic is in the win column.”

The 99 points tied the second-highest total in a bowl game that ended in regulation, but it was one of the best bowl games many had seen.

“It was a heck of a college football game, and it might go down as one of the best bowls,” said CMU coach Butch Jones. “I think you saw something special out there. They fought to the bitter end.”

On January 1, 2008 at 2:10 p.m. (PST) following the Rose Parade, the 94th Rose Bowl Game will feature a match up between the University of Illinois Fighting Illini and the University of Southern California Trojans.

Coach Pete Carroll’s resume at USC is an impressive one: An .843 winning percentage (75-14) in his seven seasons, and six consecutive BCS bowl berths, Pac-10 conference titles and 10-victory seasons. But if the Trojans are to beat Illinois in the Rose Bowl on Tuesday, they know they’ve got to contain Juice Williams, the type of quarterback who’s given them problems in recent years. Still…Williams is no Vince Young.

“Vince Young has some special stuff to him,” said USC defensive end Lawrence Jackson . “On film, we felt confident we could stop Vince. He had the ‘it’ factor. He was able to get out like Superman.”

And at a recent USC Rose Bowl Press Conference, here’s what USC Defensive Coordinator Nick Holt had to say about Juice Williams: “He’s a lot like a combination of Jake Locker and Dennis Dixon. He has a similar style because he’s physical like Locker and has the scrambling ability of Dixon, although I’m not saying he’s better. We’ve faced those guys and gotten to see what worked and what didn’t work. We’ve tried to tweak some things and work on our containment especially.”

Did you know…the Rose Bowl Game also pays $1.6 million to the BCS, which supports 100 other universities?

Under coach Bob Stoops the No. 3 Oklahoma Sooners (11-2) have been playing inspired football…but then so has the No. 11 West Vigrinia Mountaineers (10-2) under coach Pat White. So what’s it going to take for either of these teams to win on Jan. 2?

For Oklahoma…Sam Bradford has thrown for 2,879 yards with 34 touchdowns and only seven interceptions. Bradford threw for 244 yards and three touchdowns against Texas and 209 yards and two touchdowns against Missouri in the Big 12 Championship game. This guy is going to have to throw his best game of the season when it counts the most.

For West Virginia, Steve Slaton has 1,185 yards rushing and 17 touchdowns (rushing for 502 yards in the first four games of the season). Slaton is going to have to forget about the latter part of the season and go back to playing the kind of ball he was playing at the start of the season.

Stoops is 96-21 in nine seasons with the Sooners but the Mountaineers have won their past two bowl games, winning the Sugar and Gator Bowls.

For the series, however, Oklahoma leads 2-1 (Oklahoma 47-14 in ‘58, 52-10 in ‘78; West Virginia 41-27 in ‘82) .