Weber State senior tight end Peter Macon said he wanted to go out with his best game, and he probably did Saturday night at the Holt Arena.
Macon caught nine passes for 162 yards and scored three second-half touchdowns, including the one that iced the win for the Wildcats with 1:04 left, as Idaho State was making its second big comeback of the game.Weber earned its first Big Sky Conference win and finished its season 1-7 and 3-8 with a 45-35 victory over the Bengals in a game that was uncertain until the final minute, when Macon went 43 yards with a Jamie Martin TD pass.
Weber went ahead by 18, 38-20, with 10:38 left when junior rover Mike Babb made his school-record-setting fourth interception of the game and returned it 25 yards for the touchdown.
Babb has eight interceptions for the season. His score came 17 seconds after Macon's second TD, a 15-yarder on a one-handed catch of a ball behind his head. That made it 31-20 with 10:55 left.
But the Bengals, true to their reputation, scored 15 points in less than a minute to cut the lead to three points. And they did it with sophomore backup quarterback Joel Jund at the controls after Jason Whitmer was injured at 10:45 on a Troy Juergens tackle. Jund's first pass went to Babb for the score, but Jund recovered to direct two scoring drives.
That's when Weber began its final drive on its own 29, and Martin threw to Macon on a third-and-11 play.
Martin, the freshman, finished with 22-of-31-for-338 yards passing, throwing for four TDs and just one interception in his third start.
Macon and fellow senior Greg Patterson both picked up their school career records in the first half and then added to them, Macon needing three catches to become the school's all-time leader and ending up with nine. Patterson needed three points to become the school's career scoring leader, and he had five points in the first half and finished with nine points for 235 in his career.
Weber had taken a 17-3 lead with 9:01 left in the first half, but Idaho State exploded for 14 points in less than three minutes and went into the halftime intermission with a 17-17 tie. In fact, they could have been ahead by three, but Bombard missed a 42-yard field goal with :01 left.
Other Weber touchdowns went to George Jackson on a 28-yard Martin pass and Geoff Mitchell on a 1-yard run.