For 30 minutes, North Texas’ homecoming game looked like a Saturday requiring some patience. The Mean Green led Rice 10-7 at halftime. By the end, DATCU Stadium had hosted a 52-23 victory and a second half in which UNT scored touchdowns on six of seven possessions. That was too much sustained production to dismiss as one fortunate breakaway.
The result moved North Texas to 7-2 overall and 5-0 in American Conference play, its first 5-0 conference start since 2004. The avalanche was real. So were the early stalls that kept Rice within one score deep into the afternoon.
UNT opened with a field goal, then Jahiem White’s 3-yard run finished a drive featuring Justin Stevenson’s 48-yard catch to the Rice 6. The Mean Green led 10-0, but the offense then spent much of the second quarter idling. One punt followed a 10-play possession that gained 31 yards. A later nine-play possession produced only 3 yards.
Rice took advantage of the pause. Its first drive reached the UNT 10 before Gael Ochoa was sacked for a 10-yard loss, and the Owls eventually failed to convert a field goal from 38 yards. A later touchdown drive covered 85 yards, ending with Ochoa’s 36-yard pass to Will Swartz. North Texas had the better start but went to halftime ahead by only three.
The opening third-quarter possession changed the temperature. UNT marched 75 yards in nine plays, with Max Reese catching passes for 25 and 10 yards and Baron Tipton adding a 23-yard reception. Tayven Jackson finished the drive himself on a 6-yard run. Rice answered with a 75-yard touchdown march, and UNT immediately followed with a punt, so the game was hardly transformed in one uninterrupted burst.
Then the Mean Green found a rhythm and kept it. A Rice punt gave UNT the ball at the Owls’ 35, and a 35-yard drive ended with White’s 1-yard touchdown at 4:22 of the third quarter. On Rice’s first snap after the kickoff, Tyvonn Byars fumbled on a run, Zakye Barker forced it and Bryce Garza recovered at the Rice 32.
Five UNT plays later, Dalton Carnes caught a 19-yard touchdown pass. The turnover did not score by itself, but it handed North Texas a short assignment that the offense completed.
Those two possessions turned a 17-14 game into a 31-14 advantage. The swing also captured the afternoon’s larger point: North Texas was finishing opportunities repeatedly, rather than waiting for one spectacular play to rescue a sluggish offense.
White supplied the spectacular play anyway. His 60-yard touchdown run at 14:43 of the fourth quarter came after a 15-yard run by White and pushed the score to 38-17. White finished with 139 yards and three touchdowns on 21 carries.
His other scores came from 3 yards in the first quarter and 1 yard in the third, giving him three different kinds of contributions: early points, short-yardage finishing and a long sprint in space.
Jackson’s afternoon had a similar range. He threw for 303 yards while completing 18 passes on 31 attempts, without an interception, and added touchdown runs of 6 and 2 yards.
The second came at the end of an 82-yard fourth-quarter drive that included a 24-yard Stevenson catch, a 28-yard Max Reese reception and an 18-yard grab by Stevenson to put the ball at the Rice 1. Brendon Haygood later added a 4-yard touchdown after Peyton Taylor’s interception created a short field.
