Sun Belt Sports Blog

Mississippi State 27, Middle Tennessee State 6

This game boiled down to one shining centerpiece: Anthony Dixon, Anthony Dixon, Anthony Dixon. The Bulldogs’ star running back dominated Saturday’s matchup in Murfreesboro, Tenn., even when he didn’t have the ball. Dixon carried 27 times for 135 yards and two scores, one of them on a 57-yard dash, but Dixon made an impact without the pigskin. He served as a decoy on quarterback Tyson Lee’s 39-yard touchdown run in the first quarter, and the threat of the MSU running game also allowed Lee to complete 70 percent of his passes for 155 yards without an interception. Middle Tennessee State had a devil of a time stopping Dixon, but the Blue Raiders were also felled because MTSU quarterback Dwight Dasher threw three interceptions that prevented the home team from making more dents in the Floyd Stadium scoreboard.

Louisiana-Lafayette 30, Western Kentucky 22

The Ragin’ Cajuns remained unbeaten in the Sun Belt, while the hard-working but deficient Hilltoppers were topped for the 14th consecutive game. Lafayette survived a trip to Bowling Green, Ky., by immediately answering WKU’s first-drive touchdown with a seven-point score of its own. Once Ricky Bustle’s roster weathered the early storm, the visitors settled down and made themselves comfortable in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. While registering a plus-two turnover margin thanks to two interceptions of WKU quarterback Kawaun Jakes, the Cajuns scored in every quarter and topped 200 yards in both passing and rushing. In addition to turnovers, the realm of third-down conversions proved to be particularly pivotal in this tilt. Western Kentucky managed to convert only 2-of-8 conversions, but the lads from Lafayette went 12-of-19 on football’s most important down. Time of possession is a very overrated stat, but on this night, the Cajuns’ 15-minute, 36-second edge was the result of superior performance in meaningful moments. WKU will have to wait another week to break its long losing skid.

Troy 42, Florida International 33

The Alabama-based Trojans kept pace with the Louisiana hyphen schools, remaining undefeated in conference play by turning back the Golden Panthers on Saturday night in Miami. A familiar tune might refer to “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” but if you made a slight syllabic change and turned Leroy to Levi, you couldn’t be blamed for doing so. Levi Brown was one bad dude for coach Larry Blakeney’s bunch. The star quarterback riddled the secondary of coach Mario Cristobal’s club, shredding FIU for 391 yards and three touchdowns while completing 75.7 percent of his passes. Brown did fumble twice, which led to a pair of scores for the Golden Panthers (one of them a meaningless garbage touchdown on the final timed down of the evening), but aside from the two times when he put the pigskin on the carpet, Brown’s right arm delivered darts and daggers to his flotilla of fleet-footed receivers.

Brown hit Jerrel Jernigan on a 40-yard touchdown strike in the second quarter, and he connected with Josh Jarboe on a 45-yard play that set up another Trojan touchdown, a 3-yard run by Shawn Southward that gave Troy its final points of the evening with 9:57 left in the third quarter. By hitting 12 separate pass catchers in this contest, Brown naturally kept Florida International’s back seven off balance. It’s little wonder, then, that Troy scored its 42 points in the game’s first 35 minutes, before coasting down the stretch to a relatively easy win.

Florida Atlantic 44, North Texas 40

The year of close and agonizing losses finally gave way to a very relieving win for coach Howard Schnellenberger and his entertaining Owls. Florida Atlantic hasn’t been supremely successful in 2009, but Schnellenberger’s boys have certainly been competitive, and after losing a pair of two-point tussles, the team from Fort Lauderdale finally dented the win column in Denton, Tex.

The Mean Green put up a fight in an attempt to defend their home turf. Coach Todd Dodge’s club sprinted past FAU, 19-7, in the game’s first 17 minutes, a sign that the previous week’s wrenching loss to Louisiana-Lafayette had been relegated to the back regions of the collective memory. The Owls came roaring back in the next 17 minutes, however, scoring a whopping 30 points in succession to take a 37-19 lead with four minutes gone in the second half. At that point, UNT players could have thrown in the towel, but they plainly refused to go gently into that good night. The Mean Green rediscovered themselves and produced a 21-0 counter-surge to retake the lead at 40-37 with 11:38 left in regulation, with the go-ahead score coming on a nine-yard touchdown run by the unstoppable Lance Dunbar, who carried 25 times for 238 yards.

With their 18-point lead a thing of the past, the Owls–on the verge of being done in by Dunbar–made a final, feisty response. Quarterback Rusty Smith lead FAU on a 71-yard touchdown drive that culminated in a one-yard plunge by Alfred Morris with 4:55 remaining. North Texas couldn’t answer in kind, and the Owls’ schnide was stopped after four losses.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer