The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
UAB
UCF
Blazers Blank Knights in Season Finale
11/29/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 29, 2008
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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Swayze Waters kicked five field goals and UAB recorded its first shutout in a Conference USA game in school history with a 15-0 victory over UCF on Saturday. The Blazers closed the season with two wins in their last three games, both coming on the road.
The Blazers (4-8, 3-5 C-USA) limited UCF (4-8, 3-5) to 209 total yards offense in recording the first shutout in a conference game in 10 seasons in Conference USA.
"We're really happy to win this game," said head coach Neil Callaway. "We are tremendously proud of the players. I thought they played extremely hard and competed and stayed focused the entire game.
"We talked a lot this week about three things. We talked about that we needed to just win a ballgame, obviously we wanted to win one for the seniors, and we wanted to win one to create some momentum for next year."
Blazers quarterback Joe Webb did everything but get his team into the end zone, controlling the action throughout the game with option runs and accurate passes. Webb was 20-of-28 for 244 yards and rushed 22 times for 80 yards as UAB had more than twice the possession time - 41:36 to 18:24 - than UCF. He also helped the Blazers convert 11-of-19 third-down conversions.
Webb also became UAB's second 1,000-yard rusher in school history, joining Carl Sanders who rushed for 1,154 yards during the 1996 season. Earlier this year, Webb shattered the C-USA record for rushing yards by a quarterback in a season.
UCF's Rob Calabrese was 2-of-8 for 6 yards and was yanked at the end of the first half and middle of the fourth quarter.
Joe Weatherford replaced Calabrese and had early success, but he floundered in the second half. Weatherford was 12-of-26 and was intercepted twice, including one by Kevin Sanders that stopped a drive at the UAB 12-yard line with 2:08 left in the game.
For Sanders, it was his conference-leading seventh interception of the season and the fourth for the senior in UAB's last three games.
UAB cruised to a 9-0 halftime lead, holding the ball for more than 21 minutes on their way to converting seven of 11 third-down situations and outgaining the Knights 199-84.
"I had no idea we'd be able to shut them out," said Callaway. "The defense played extremely well. We gave up a few throws, but that's going to happen. We've come a long way from early in the year when we struggled to stop anybody and now we're doing some things pretty well."
"We've played a lot of freshmen (on defense) and they've grown up. They've gained some confidence and they're playing with aggressiveness and doing the thing they need to do.
The second half was more of the same with the Blazers grinding out long drives that stalled deep in UCF territory. Waters booted field goals of 36 and 28 yards, the last one coming with 7:05 left in the game.
Waters finished the season with 19 field goals in 24 tries (79.1 percent). He concludes his Blazer career with 50 field goals, which ranks second in school history to Nick Hayes who had 57 from 2001-04.
