Jim Mashek

WKU’s HELTON BUOYED BY PURSUIT OF BOWL GAME ELIGIBILITY; REED: ‘WE DIDN’T PERFORM’

Everything seemed to be falling into place.

It was a typical November afternoon on The Hill. Crisp, maybe chilly. The bulk of the Homecoming crowd at Western Kentucky University seemed to be on the South Lawn, but the potent WKU offense opened the game in promising fashion.

On the third snap of the day, WKU quarterback Austin Reed found running back Elijah Young in the right seam of the field, firing a quick pass that Young turned into a 73-yard touchdown reception.

The next time the Hilltoppers got the ball in their hands, Reed directed a 10-play, 73-yard touchdown drive, scrambling up the middle of New Mexico State’s defense and leaping for the end zone a couple yards short of the goal line. He made it, too, and more fans started filing into the stadium as the Tops were breezing along with a 14-0 lead.

It was midway through a heady first quarter.

Then, bang. The Aggies got on the board with a field goal. WKU’s offense went three-and-out and senior punter Cody Munson only managed an 18-yard punt that rolled out of bounds.

Six plays later, New Mexico State burned the Hilltoppers’ defense on a jet sweep, a 10-yard dash to the goal line by Aggies receiver Jonathan Brady. It was 14-10, WKU, and New Mexico State had all the momentum.

Western never recovered.

The big, physical Aggies offense controlled the football for 25 minutes of the final three quarters, keeping Austin Reed and his Tops receivers on the sidelines. New Mexico State flexed its muscles and slugged out a methodical 38-29 victory on Saturday, zapping the Hilltoppers’ fading hopes of a berth in the Conference USA championship game.

Reed briefly entered the NCAA Transfer Portal last year, after the regular season, before returning to the Hilltoppers and guiding them to an impressive 44-23 victory over a 10-win South Alabama squad in the R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. WKU was an odds-on favorite to take the Conference USA championship, in a revamped 10-team league with FBS newcomers Jacksonville State and Sam Houston State.

New Mexico State played its way into the C-USA title tilt, earning its eighth victory in 11 games while improving to 6-1 in conference play. The Aggies will square off with unbeaten Liberty University (10-0, 7-0 in Conference USA) in the league championship game on December 3 in Lynchburg, Virginia.

WKU, meanwhile, dropped to 5-5 overall and 3-3 in Conference USA. Fifth-year coach Tyson Helton was buoyed by the possibilities that the Hilltoppers can still compete for bowl eligibility with remaining games against Sam Houston State and Florida International, but Reed was clearly devastated by the defeat.

“I’m not going to sugar-coat it,” Reed said. “I came back here to win a conference championship — a lot of us did — and we didn’t perform. So that goal, and that milestone, is gone.”

That’ll likely hurt the Hilltoppers at the gate for their final home game, Saturday afternoon’s contest against the Bearkats from Sam Houston State. A paid homecoming crowd of 16,139 thinned throughout the second half at Houchens-Smith Stadium, and the Hilltoppers will have to lick their wounds and cast an eye toward the future.

Western Kentucky hasn’t won a Conference USA championship since 2016, when former WKU coach Jeff Brohm — off to a flourishing start at the University of Louisville — directed the Hilltoppers to back-to-back C-USA titles.

Tyson Helton is determined to right the ship, to get back on the winning track as the Hilltoppers get ready for Conference USA bottom feeders Sam Houston State (2-8, 1-5 in C-USA) and Florida International (4-6, 1-6). Injuries to significant players such as linebacker JaQues Evans, receiver Michael Mathison and cornerback Upton Stout have haunted the Tops over the course of the season, and Reed will be moving on to professional football in a matter of weeks.

Tough time to be a Hilltopper, to say the least.

“It’s a tough loss,” Helton said. “New Mexico State did everything they needed to do … They’re a good football team. We’ve got two more games, to get bowl eligible. We’ve got a lot to play for …

“We’ve got to get our jaw set and just keep battling. We’ve got good things ahead of us if we just keep battling.”

The Hilltoppers’ defense has struggled against big, strong dual threat quarterbacks, which was certainly the case in a 27-24 non-conference loss to Troy University on September 23, and then again one month later as Liberty quarterback Kaiden Salter guided the unbeaten Flames to a 42-29 victory over the Hilltoppers at Houchens-Smith Stadium.

WKU’s defense surrendered 324 yards rushing in that Tuesday night tilt at The Houch, and the Aggies punched out 220 yards on the ground themselves on Saturday.

Consequently, New Mexico State will be playing in a conference championship game for the first time in school history. Not only that, the Aggies have hit the eight-win plateau for just the fifth time since the Las Cruces, New Mexico university opened its doors in 1888.

The Land of Enchantment has brought something else to Bowling Green, Kentucky.

“We all take the blame in a loss,” Helton said.

“We wanted to play for the championship,” WKU quarterback Austin Reed added in a somber tone. “We didn’t get the job done.”

NMSU junior quarterback Diego Pavia and the Aggies’ ground game may have been the difference. Once the Aggies got the lead, they played like a team clearly in control. New Mexico State’s Travis Hudson got behind WKU cornerback Austin Johnson on a fade route, making the catch on a 4-yard TD pass from Pavia midway through the second quarter, putting the Aggies in front, 17-14.

WKU finished the first half in spectacular fashion, but it wouldn’t portend things to come over the final 30 minutes.

Reed directed an 11-play, 72-yard scoring drive, and the Tops’ Craig Burt Jr. made a nifty one-handed touchdown grab in the back of the end zone with six seconds left in the half. WKU was in front, 21-17, at the break.

New Mexico State took the kickoff to open the second half, and the Hilltoppers’ defense got off the field after surrendering just one first down. The Tops were forced to punt themselves before Diego Pavia and the Aggies burned six minutes of clock while driving 80 yards in 10 plays for the go-ahead touchdown.

Pavia had all sorts of time in the pocket before finding NMSU receiver Eli Stowers on a delayed slant for a 7-yard TD pass, and the Aggies would grab the lead, at 24-21, along with the momentum.

“We didn’t play complementary football,” Helton said. “We just couldn’t convert on third down (5 of 12) … there were times when our defense needed to respond … we didn’t tackle well, at times.”

The Aggies’ Miles Rowser was hit with multiple penalties on a single play — unsportsmanlike conduct and a personal foul for targeting — and his ejection from the game helped the Hilltoppers reach the NMSU 4-yard line early in the fourth quarter.

From there, the Tops went nowhere. And then freshman WKU placekicker Lucas Carniero, a reliable performer for most of the season, missed a 23-yard field goal attempt that would have tied the game.

(The Tops lost talented sophomore tight end River Helms to an injury in that possession.)

Eli Stowers struck again for the Aggies, scoring on a 7-yard run that put New Mexico State in front, 31-21, with 4:14 left in the game. Needing two scores, Austin Reed tried to get the Hilltoppers quickly downfield before he was intercepted by NMSU’s Mehki Miller, who traversed the width of the field before scoring on a nail-in-the-coffin, 57-yard pick six.

“We had missed opportunities … I tried to force one in,” Reed said. “It was a pick, and they brought it back …”

Now the Hilltoppers, an overwhelming Conference USA favorite for the revamped league over the summer, will try to make something of their anticlimactic two games left on the regular-season schedule. There are bowl games that they’ll play for, with C-USA tie-ins, but they’re unlikely to be going back to New Orleans, having played there last December

A couple victories in those two games — they’ll be favored over both Sam Houston State and FIU — could send the Tops to the Bahamas Bowl, against an opponent from the Mid-American Conference, or the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl, which likely will be played on a chilly afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas, or — wait for it — the New Mexico Bowl, on Saturday, December 16, against a Mountain West opponent in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“We’ve got to set our jaw, and keep battling,” WKU’s Tyson Helton said. “We’ve got a lot to play for …”