The South Florida Bulls were vying to start a season with three consecutive wins over ranked opponents. The last team to do so was the Miami Hurricanes in 1987. On Saturday, UM made sure that didn’t change.
No. 5 Miami remained unbeaten with a 49-12 victory over No. 18 USF in a game Bulls coach Alex Golesh described as “humbling” after a week in which his program was the darling of college football after victories over then-ranked teams Boise State and Florida.
Carson Beck threw three touchdown passes and Mark Fletcher Jr. rushed for 120 yards and two touchdowns for Miami (3-0), denying USF (2-1) the chance at a third straight ranked win to start this season.
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The Hurricanes took a 28-6 lead at the half, dominating in all phases, especially on the offensive and defensive lines. UM’s offense was efficient, scoring touchdowns on four of its six opening drives.
"It's not OK to lose by any means,” Golesh said. “But we'll be in a situation like this again and come out on the other side. We'll regroup."
Golesh said the Bulls’ had little room for error against the bigger, faster and more talented Hurricanes.
“You saw a team that will fight, but the margins against another really, really good football team are really tight. We didn't win in the margins,” he said.
Beck completed 23 of 28 passes for 340 yards and ran for a touchdown. Fletcher had a two-TD game for the second consecutive week.
“The young man's lost three games in his college career,” Golesh said of Beck, a Georgia transfer. “He's tough. He's gritty. I thought he was super accurate. ... I think that young man's really, really good.”
Byrum Brown completed 20 of 36 passes for 274 yards and a touchdown for USF. He also threw an interception late in the first half, ending his school-record streak of 252 passes without being picked off.
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Miami built a 35-6 leads before the Bulls' only touchdown, a 12-yard catch by Christian Neptune with 12:48 left in the game.
The Bulls got 128 yards on four catches from Chas Nimrod. USF had four passes go for more than 25 yards, including 53- and 43-yarders to Nimrod.
However, a major issue for the Bulls was an inability to establish any type of running game, especially in the first half. USF finished with 40 rushing yards on 27 carries. That's about 1.5 yards per attempt.
"We're living and dying with explosives (long plays), and that's a tough place to live,” Golesh said. “Anyone that's watched us play that knows what we hang our hat on is the ability run the ball. And when you can't get chunks and efficiently move the sticks, it's really, really hard.”
The game was essentially sealed when the Hurricanes' Rueben Bain Jr. stopped Brown on a fourth-and-3 carry from the Miami 9-yard line late in the third quarter, with the hosts leading 28-6.
Miami then needed only six plays to go 91 yards. Beck had three passes for 64 yards on the drive and Fletcher capped it with a 13-yard TD run.
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"The end result wasn't what we wanted, and it certainly isn't what we expect as a program,” Golesh said. “But I am proud of the stick and fight of that group. I am proud of the resilience of that group. Ain't nobody pointing a finger. Ain't nobody blaming anybody.”
The game included a lightning delay of 1 hour, 43 minutes with 13:45 left in the second quarter. By then, Miami led 14-3 on Beck’s first-quarter touchdown passes to Joshua Moore, both capping nine-play drives.
“We certainly didn’t execute like we have been,” Golesh said. “Just didn’t look like us.”
It was Miami's biggest victory margin over a ranked opponent since beating Washington 65-7 in 2001, the Hurricanes' most recent national championship season.
The Hurricanes are 6-0 since the start of last season against in-state opponents, winning those games by an average of 34.5 points.
“There was a lot of motivation going into this thing, besides the fact that they were a ranked football team because I have a lot of respect for their coaches and their players,” UM coach Mario Cristobal said. “This was an in-state game. And those games, you have to play your very best.”
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The Bulls will find out Sunday if the blowout loss was enough to drop them out of the AP rankings. Nevertheless, Golesh said the Bulls must grow from the experience and look to the next game.
And after three ranked opponents, USF returns home this Saturday afternoon to face South Carolina State (2-1), a member of the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision.
"For us as a program, that obviously was humbling,” Golesh said of Saturday’s loss. “We've got to reset and play the next one."
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
