Indiana Scores 52 on 365 Yards and Beats North Texas
Here is a number to chew on: North Texas gained 367 yards, Indiana gained 365, and the scoreboard said 52-16. The Mean Green outgained the Hoosiers by two yards and lost by 36. Nobody asked me, but I would take Indiana's version of those yards.
It started fast. Josh Hoover hit Nick Marsh for 15 yards on the opening score, and Turbo Richard's 2-yard run at 0:13 of the first quarter made it 14-0. Charlie Becker's 9-yard catch made it 21-3, and after a pair of Dominic De Freitas field goals for North Texas and a Nico Radicic 49-yarder, Indiana led 24-6 at the half. Jahiem White's 9-yard run cut it to 24-13 early in the third, and Hoover answered with a 35-yard touchdown to Becker less than two minutes later. After a third De Freitas kick, it was 31-16 going into the fourth, and the Hoosiers outscored North Texas 21-0 from there.
Hoover was the story: 13 of 16 for 231 yards and four touchdowns, with no interceptions and no turnovers for Indiana as a team. North Texas threw one pick. That gap, plus seven Indiana touchdowns against one for the Mean Green, is how two teams with nearly identical yardage ended up 36 points apart.
Indiana starts 1-0, North Texas 0-1. If you started Hoover you are already happy, and if you owned White you got 22.7 points out of a losing effort (seven catches helped).
One more detail for the stat-sheet people: Indiana's seven touchdowns were four Hoover passes and three runs, and Grant Wilson's 43-yarder with 1:47 left was the last of them. Radicic kicked all seven extra points and a 49-yard field goal, so the Hoosiers wasted nothing.