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EL PASO, Tex. - The Pitt careers of Darrin Hall and Qadree Ollison came to a close on Monday in the Sun Bowl loss to Stanford.

Unfortunately, only one of the senior running backs finished the game.

Ollison was off to a strong start with 23 yards on his first five carries when he limped off the field after rushing for 10 yards on a third-and-10 in the first quarter. The Niagara Falls native sprained his right ankle on the play and didn’t return to the game.

Hall and sophomore AJ Davis carried the load after that, but the disappointment about Ollison’s injury loomed over the rest of the game.

“It’s hard,” Hall said after the 14-13 loss. “We feed on each other throughout the game and I just knew I had to step up more. I know that he’s upset it ended like that, but he has a big career coming for him, so he just has to rest up and get healthy.”

Ollison’s final game wasn’t what he would have wanted it to be, but his final season at Pitt certainly exceeded expectations. He rushed for 1,213 yards on 194 attempts - 6.3 yards per carry - and scored 11 touchdowns. In the process, he became just the sixth running back in Pitt history with multiple 1,000-yard rushing seasons in his career.

More uniquely, he posted his 1,000-yard seasons three years apart. His predecessors stacked 1,000-yard performances in consecutive seasons: Tony Dorsett went back-to-back-to-back-to-back from 1973-76, Curvin Richards did it in 1998 and 1999, LeSean McCoy in 2007 and 2008 and Dion Lewis in 2009 and 2010. Only James Conner had separation between his two 1,000-yard seasons - 2014 and 2016 - but that was due to an injury.

Ollison was healthy between his breakout redshirt freshman season in 2015 and his final year this fall, but as he sat behind Conner and split time with Hall, he was limited in his production in 2016 and 2017.

Then he broke out this season. He posted four 100-yard games, topped 200 yards in a 16-carry/235-yard performance against Virginia Tech and nearly hit 200 when he rushed for 192 against Syracuse.

Ollison finishes his Pitt career with 2,859 yards, good for No. 7 on Pitt’s all-time career rushing list and just one yard shy of Lewis, who is No. 6 at 2,860.

With Ollison out for the bulk of the Sun Bowl, Hall became the lead back and did well, rushing 16 times for 123 yards (7.7 yards per carry) and a touchdown - the eighth 100-yard game of his career and his fourth this season. Davis added 27 yards on six attempts, and as a team, Pitt put up 208 rushing yards on Stanford’s defense.

In that respect, it was a fitting conclusion to a season that saw Pitt rush for 3,192 yards - the fourth time in Pitt history that the Panthers have topped 3,000 rushing yards in a season and the eighth time they have averaged better than 200 rushing yards per game.

Leading that charge were Ollison and Hall, the first pair of players in Pitt history to post 1,000-yard rushing performances in the same season. It was a year for the record books and a fine close to the careers for those two players, even if Ollison’s ended prematurely.