DALLAS — Arkansas’ defense entered Tuesday’s Cotton Bowl with quarterback Chase Daniel and Missouri’s highpowered passing attack locked in its sights.

By the time the game ended, it was Tigers tailback Tony Temple who had blindsided the Razorbacks.

“We definitely didn’t have a lot of focus on him coming into the game,” Arkansas senior linebacker Weston Dacus said. “We just figured we would get it done up front. We haven’t had much trouble with the run game in the past.”

Temple gave Arkansas trouble practically from start to finish in Missouri’s 38-7 victory, rushing for a Cotton Bowl-record 281 yards on 24 carries. Temple averaged 11. 7 yards a carry and scored four touchdowns to carry an offense usually reliant on the passing game.

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Temple piled up 159 yards in the first half, when Arkansas played primarily with a threeman front and as many as six defensive backs in an effort to combat the four- and five-wide sets used by Missouri. When Daniel failed to get untracked in the manner that led him to a fourth-place finish in this season’s Heisman Trophy balloting, the Tigers turned to Temple.

Dacus said the running plays weren’t a surprise to Arkansas’ defense, but Temple’s ability to avoid defenders and find open space seemed uncanny.

“They had us outnumbered up front and he found the open hole every time, it seemed like,” Dacus said.

Once Temple got through the holes he often made the next line of would-be tacklers miss, which led to big gain after big gain.

“I’m not used to seeing our defenders dive at ankles, OK, and I saw a lot of guys diving at ankles today for whatever reason,” Arkansas interim coach Reggie Herring said. “We just didn’t tackle well. We just didn’t come to play.”

Defensive coordinator Louis Campbell said Temple’s ability to consistently generate positive yardage prevented Arkansas from forcing Missouri into third-and-long situations.

“If you can’t stop the run, I don’t care who you’re playing against, you’re not going to win,” Campbell said. “We didn’t do a good job of even slowing it down, much less stopping it.”

That was true in the second half, too, even though Arkansas switched back to a base fourman front. Still, Temple found plenty of running room.

“You could have driven a truck through some of those holes,” said former Rice running back Dicky Maegle, whose Cotton Bowl-record 265 yards stood for 54 years.

“Half his runs were [against ] air,” Herring said of Temple.

Temple might also have benefited from Arkansas safety Matt Hewitt’s limited playing time. Hewitt was the Razorbacks’ leading tackler during the regular season but played only a handful of snaps Tuesday.

“I know that he didn’t move around real well in pregame and didn’t seem himself,” Herring said.

Campbell said Hewitt wasn’t injured and that his lack of playing time was more because of Arkansas choosing to play most of the game with only one safety, senior Kevin Woods, who had a team-high eight tackles.

But regardless of who played, or in what scheme, senior defensive tackle Marcus Harrison said the Razorbacks had only themselves to blame for their poorest defensive effort of the season.

“We weren’t tackling like we should have, we weren’t in the places we were supposed to be, and we got the result we got today,” Harrison said. “It surprised us because we haven’t ever had anybody run the ball like that on us... but, hey, they came out and found something that worked, and that was running the ball.

“ When it worked, they stuck to it.”