No. 23 North Texas beats San Diego State 49-47 in high-scoring New Mexico Bowl

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) Caleb Hawkins ran for two touchdowns and caught a scoring pass, Ashton Gray added a pair of rushing touchdowns and Cameron Dorner had two scoring catches as No. 22 North Texas Mean Green beat San Diego State Aztecs 49-47 in the New Mexico Bowl on Saturday night.

Hawkins carried 30 times and gained 197 yards, scoring on runs of 9 and and 3 yards, along with a 23-yard TD reception. Gray ran for 152 yards on 16 rushes. Dorner had six receptions for 66 yards, including TD catches of 1 and 31 yards.

“When you play the game like Caleb plays, it was such toughness and physicality, you immediately earn the respect of everybody in the room,” interim head coach Drew Svoboda said of Hawkins. “And we really had a good blend. It wasn’t just driven by the guys that had all the experience. And there’s guys on both sides of the ball, really, all three phases where there’s just not a ton of weak links.”

North Texas (12-2) quarterback Drew Mestemaker was 27 of 47 passing for 250 yards and three TDs to help the Mean Green to a school record for wins.

“Our offensive line does a great job in pass protection and the run game,” Svoboda said. “And I would say this that when you think of North Texas and all the passing yards that we do rack up, and we’re really good at it, but our ability to run the football, I think, is what probably separated this football team from from the different teams that we’ve had here before.”

San Diego State (9-4) stayed close thanks to the rushing of backup quarterback Bert Emanuel Jr., who ran for 170 yards and two scores, including a 72-yarder, before injuring his arm and leaving the game with 6:07 remaining in the second quarter.

Although his backup, Kyle Crum, did complete his first pass for a 3-yard touchdown to make it 28-20, he was not the same rushing threat as Emanuel and he had trouble moving the Aztecs through the air.

The third quarter was telling as the Mean Green scored twice on a Hawkins run and a Dorner catch while SDSU managed just 11 total yards. North Texas led 42-20 entering the fourth quarter.

“We’ve got to do a good job assessing how we go about things at halftime to be able to go into a better start to the to the second half,” SDSU coach Sean Lewis said. “That’s the situational football, where, at times, where we’ve done it really, really well, we’ve won the middle eight, and we’ve won ball games. Obviously, we failed to convert at the end of the first half. We failed to come out and start fast in the second half, so we didn’t win. The middle eight came up short.”

Crum, who finished with 169 passing yards, did score two rushing TDs in the fourth quarter.

And, Nathan Acevedo returned a Mean Green punt 63 yards for a touchdown to cut the lead to 42-34. He later added a 65-yard kickoff return.

But a 75-yard drive, capped by a Dorner’s 31-yard scoring catch, made it 49-34.

San Diego State scored twice, including with one second left, to make the final two-point margin.

“They’re really good offensively,” Lewis said of North Texas. “You don’t fall out of bed and become the No. 1 scoring offense in the country. They’ve got really good players.”

North Texas: In what could be his last appearance with the Mean Green, former walk-on Mestemaker did not make a strong case for a big NIL payday after recently entering the transfer portal.

San Diego State: Hawkins, a freshman, finished the season with 25 touchdowns and 1,434 yards.

North Texas: The first order of business will be finding a permanent head coach to lead the Mean Green at Indiana, which ended the regular season ranked No. 1.

San Diego State: The Aztecs will open their move to the revamped Pac-12 at home against Portland State.

---

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football