North Texas Earns Bowl Eligibility
{fshare id=4473}
DENTON, TX – North Texas found out Thursday night just how difficult and demanding is the path to bowl eligibility. But the Mean Green repeatedly proved themselves up to the task with a gritty, extremely-hard earned 28-16 victory over Rice at Apogee Stadium to achieve bowl eligibility for the first time since 2004.
The Mean Green, struggling to find its game on Halloween night, out-gained two to one and trailing 16-7, got a 42-yard touchdown run from Antoinne Jimmerson and a 65-yard punt return for a TD from Brelan Chancellor in a dramatic 1:35 span late in the second quarter to take the lead. But it was the defense that made it hold up with one of the most stirring goal-line stands in program history.
After a tipped-pass interception, Rice drove to a first and goal at the NT one-yard line. The Mean Green stopped the Owls four times, only to see Rice get an extra set of downs, by way of penalty, at the two. But North Texas stone-walled the Owls four more times, smashing the Owls for an 11-yard loss on the final fourth-down play. The stand turned back eight plays inside the North Texas six-yard line, seven of them snapped inside the Mean Green three.
“I was just blown away by that goal-line stand,” said North Texas coach Dan McCarney, whose team is now 6-3 overall and 4-1 in Conference USA play after knocking off the C-USA West Division co-leaders. “It was really
representative of this team’s toughness, it’s never-say-die attitude.”
“Everyone was just doing their job,” said defensive back Kenny Buyers, who had a team-high 10 tackles. “It’s just the best feeling.”
Rice’s last hope was extinguished by an interception by Marcus Trice, his second of the game, late in the fourth quarter.
“We’re not in a bowl yet, we’re just bowl eligible,” McCarney added. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. But this is a major milestone.
“That was a great example of character out there.”
North Texas opened the game on offense for the first time this year, but the experience didn’t sit well. The Mean Green was unable to establish its run game, and the Rice secondary blanketed Chancellor while getting pressure on quarterback Derek Thompson, holding North Texas to just 130 yards total offense in the first half. The only North Texas score came on a fumble forced by Trice and returned 55 yards for a touchdown by Zach Orr. The Owls, however, started gaining chunks of yards in 75- and 88-yard scoring drives, both culminating in touchdowns for a 16-7 lead.
That’s when the game turned. North Texas got its first scoring drive of the night, kept alive by a third-down run by defensive tackle-turned-fullback Richard Abbe and capped by Jimmerson breaking through the right side of the line and hauling two tacklers the final five yards to the end zone. North Texas then forced a three-and-out from Rice, and Chancellor made the Owls pay for punting to him with the fourth kick-return touchdown of his career and second of the season.
The Mean Green defense threw another second-half shutout, its third of the year, holding Rice (6-3, 4-1) to just 101 yards total offense in the second half. In addition to Buyers’s 10 tackles, Orr, Trice and Will Wright had nine tackles each, and Aaron Bellazin, Brandon McCoy and Alexander Lincoln led a second-half pass rush that sacked Rice quarterback Taylor McHargue four times.
