BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - North Texas did not leave Memorial Stadium with a moral-victory press release, and Neal Brown did not dress up a 52-16 loss to No. 6 Indiana as anything but a season-opening defeat.
What the first-year Mean Green coach did argue, and what the box score backs up, is that Denton's club controlled the clock for long stretches against the defending national champions before the fourth quarter got away.
Josh Hoover, the former TCU quarterback now starting for Indiana, threw for 231 yards and four touchdowns on 13-of-16 passing with no turnovers, The Associated Press reported. Turbo Richard added two rushing scores. Indiana extended the FBS' longest active winning streak to 17 games and its home winning streak to 16 after a pregame title celebration.
Possession without points
Brown's postgame point of emphasis was time of possession. North Texas limited Indiana to 46 offensive plays, the AP noted, by staying on the field even when the scoreboard lagged. Jahiem White, in his Mean Green debut, rushed 14 times for 61 yards and a touchdown and caught seven passes for 36 yards.
Quarterback Tayven Jackson - who previously played at Indiana before stopping at UCF - completed 22 of 28 passes for 192 yards with one interception and left briefly with cramps, Brown said afterward.
Dominic De Freitas kicked field goals of 47, 33 and 38 yards. White's 9-yard run trimmed the deficit to 24-13 early in the third, but Hoover answered four plays later with a 35-yard touchdown to Charlie Becker. Indiana scored 21 points in the fourth, including a 42-yard Hoover strike to Davion Chandler and a 43-yard Grant Wilson run.
"For 3 1/2 quarters, I thought our guys went toe-to-toe with the national champs, and I thought we represented UNT well," Brown told the AP. "We just didn't finish it."
