Play of the game: Pivotal misfire leaves O'Donohoe disgusted
ROBERT TURBEVILLEARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Brennan O'Donohoe's voice dropped, and his head dropped. He quit talking. He quit responding to questions. When he finally raised his head minutes later, his eyes were red and watery.
It was not a good day to be Arkansas' kicker.
"I just didn't do my job today," O'Donohoe said, fighting back tears.
O'Donohoe missed a 43-yard field-goal attempt that would have given the Razorbacks a one-point lead over LSU early in the fourth quarter Friday, and it seemed momentum swung from the Razorbacks when the ball bounced off the right upright.
LSU went ahead 34-25 on its next possession and ended up beating the Razorbacks by a field goal, 41-38.
O'Donohoe said he was taking the loss personally but didn't say much else.
"I felt good about the kick," said O'Donohoe, a sophomore from El Dorado. "I don't know what happened. I don't know. It just didn't go."
Holder Dowell Loggains said O'Donohoe hit it good.
"It was just bad luck," Loggains said.
LSU took over at its 27 after the miss and took five plays to take a nine-point lead, with Rohan Davey capping the scoring drive with a 38-yard pass to Josh Reed.
Arkansas fought back to within three with 2:27 left, and sometime around then, Loggains said, he talked to O'Donohoe. Loggains could tell O'Donohoe, who missed two field goals a week earlier against Mississippi State, was down.
"I told him to be ready. It could come down to him again," Loggains said. "If we could get it down there again, be ready because it could be on his shoulders again. ... We thought at the time we would get another shot at it."
That shot never came. LSU converted on third-and-13 with a little more than one minute left, then ran out the clock.
O'Donohoe's kick, which was from the right hash mark, wasn't easy. His long this season was 45, which he hit against Ole Miss. O'Donohoe, who is 29 of 29 on extra points, doesn't have an overpowering leg. He's 1 of 4 on field-goal attempts between 40-49 yards.
There were several plays that could have made the difference in the game.
The play before his field-goal attempt, Cedric Cobbs was stopped for a 4-yard loss. What if Cobbs had been stopped for no gain? It would have been a 39-yard attempt then, and O'Donohoe is 3 of 4 between 30-39 yards.
"You can't put this on him," Arkansas quarterback Zak Clark said. "We missed three two-point conversions. Our defense gave us five turnovers. We should have scored a lot more points."
Arkansas needed only three points to send the game into overtime and keep its hopes of an SEC West title alive. Maybe that's why O'Donohoe was beating himself up.
"I'm sure that's tough on him with the final score and all that," said Arkansas assistant coach James Shibest, who oversees special teams. "But there's a lot that could happen in a game.
"There's a lot of big kicks that he's missed this year. I know where he's getting it. Those are the ones that people remember.
"He doesn't need to take it hard. If you look at his stats, what he's done this year for a sophomore, I think he's really bounced back real well. He's going to get that one big kick eventually."
This article was published on November 24, 2001
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