A week earlier, true freshman Adam Urbano had scored the winning touchdown at Western Carolina as the Eagles battled for an overtime victory in a comeback of NCAA record proportions. The next week, Georgia Southern would become part of NCAA history against the The Citadel, playing in a fourth overtime game that season and becoming the only FCS team with that unique distinction.
 
Record notwithstanding, The Citadel always played Georgia Southern tough and the Bulldogs went up 9-0 in the first quarter after a touchdown and safety put their first points on the board. The Eagles had to catch up after each Bulldog score, then took a brief 21-16 lead until the Bulldogs grabbed it back midway through the period, 24-21.
 
"One of the things I remember was that our fans warned me about how difficult it was to play the Citadel there, at The Citadel, that strange things happened," said former Georgia Southern Coach Chris Hatcher.

Not only was it a strange game, by the end, it was a marathon. It was one of only three NCAA Division I games to require more than two overtimes that year. The unusually warm November afternoon was the backdrop for the intense struggle, with the two teams trading punts and possessions throughout the second half.
 
"The game had been close the whole way through and I was really hoping the game wouldn't come down to a last-second field goal," recounted Adrian Mora, who was a redshirt freshman placekicker at the time. "Sure enough… that was really our first pressure situation as a field goal unit that year."

Mora, knocked in a 37-yard field goal with 3:42 left in the game to tie it at 24, but it was far from over. The time left seemed like an eternity, with each play taking only a few ticks off the clock.
 
The Bulldogs wasted no time getting to the Eagles side of the field.  On the first play of the drive, The Citadel's Andre Roberts caught his eighth pass, this one for 29 yards, and was finally tackled at the 43. Four more plays and the Bulldogs sat at the GS 21. Ninety-four seconds were left in the game and Georgia Southern used a timeout.  Roberts and Bert Blanchard connected for a 14-yard pass play to land the Bulldogs only seven yards away from the endzone.
 
Eagle Dakota Walker stepped up to the challenge and swept Blanchard up for a three-yard loss. Second and goal and the teams traded timeouts. Quentin Taylor and K.R Snipes pushed the Bulldogs back two yards on the next play before the Eagles talked it over with another timeout.
 
Third and goal. The Bulldogs send Asheton Jordan again and Walker met him in the backfield, pulling the ball loose, but Jordan recovered his own fumble. With 32 seconds left, Citadel calls a timeout before sending out its field goal unit with the ball at the GS 15.
 
"After we tied the game with our field goal, we talked on the headsets about the time we would have left and the chance we would have," Hatcher said. "But I just had a feeling he was going to miss the kick."
 
The ball sailed wide right.
 
On its first overtime drive, The Citadel went exclusively on the ground with Jordan going 22 yards on its first rush. Terrell Dallas scored the go-ahead touchdown to put 31 on the scoreboard for the home team. Eagle ball and Georgia Southern used three plays, two of them passes, with Antonio Henton tossing a 13-yard touchdown pass to Zeke Rozier for the Eagles to equal the score at 31.
 
Round two began with the Eagles on offense.
 
One play, Raja Andrews' 10^th reception in the game, a Georgia Southern record, put the Eagles up 38-31. The Bulldogs showed no signs of quitting and picked up a first down with a 10-yard reception. Dallas ran for three more yards before The Citadel escaped from a third-and-eight situation as Blanchard hit Joshua Haney for more than enough for a first down with a short pass from the GS 2 and then threw another pass to Taylor Cornett to knot the game at 38.
 
The Citadel offense would remain on the field for its third possession and handed off to Dallas, first for 16 yards for a new set of downs at the GS 9, and then to Dallas again, for five more yards. One more yard. That was it, all the Eagle defense would allow. Then two more yards, nothing more. The Bulldogs were just short of the first down with the ball excruciatingly close to the one yard line. With the Georgia Southern defense standing firm, the Citadel opted to kick a field goal for a 41-38 advantage.

Everyone would have to wait and see if that would be enough.
 
Urbano scored the Eagles' first touchdown of the game, in what seemed like, at this point in the contest, a really long time ago. He had gotten banged up and missed a chunk of the second half with only a handful of carries for a total of 26 yards.

"The game was back and forth -- we scored, they would score – and I just remember saying to myself every time they did something good, 'just go out there and respond'" said Urbano.
 
Urbano doesn't remember more than one of the plays in the Eagles' final overtime possession. Henton popped out for five yards and then Mike McIntosh caught a pass to give Georgia Southern a first down at the CIT 13. Urbano probably doesn't remember running for a key six-yard carry before finally going out of bounds, or Rozier's forge ahead for another first down to put the Eagles just nine feet away from victory.
 
"They called my number and I punched it in," Urbano said.
 
He remembers that. He probably doesn't remember that it didn't look like his feet even touched the ground.