DENTON, Texas — UNLV had scored at least 20 points in 36 straight games coming into Saturday, the longest such streak in the country. The Rebels never reached the end zone at DATCU Stadium.
The North Texas Mean Green forced 4 turnovers and won 44-6 in front of an announced 20,331, the first victory of the season and the first home game of Neal Brown‘s tenure. North Texas outgained UNLV 444-301 and did not turn the ball over.
On the game’s opening series, the Mean Green forced a three-and-out, the first time a North Texas opponent had gone three-and-out on its first drive since Charlotte did it on Oct. 24, 2025. Dominic De Freitas put North Texas ahead with a 35-yard field goal at 10:48 of the first quarter.
Two series later, Davion Rhodes sacked Jackson Arnold for a loss of 15 yards and knocked the ball loose at the UNLV 23, where Justin Benton recovered. De Freitas made it 6-0 with a 27-yard kick at 6:27. On UNLV’s next possession, Wesley Hudson punched the ball away from Jaylon Glover and Zakye Barker recovered at the UNLV 49. Three plays and 49 yards later, Tayven Jackson hit Jahiem White for a 32-yard touchdown at 3:51.
UNLV kicker Ramon Villela ended the shutout with a 39-yard field goal at 5:38 of the second quarter. North Texas answered with 8 plays and 75 yards, and Jackson scored on a 3-yard run at 1:56 for a 20-3 lead.
UNLV took the ensuing kickoff and moved 74 yards on 15 plays, down to the North Texas 1. Out of timeouts, the Rebels ran Glover into the middle on fourth-and-goal, and he was stopped for no gain as the half expired.
Brown said the secondary played well despite injuries at the position, and that North Texas rotated four cornerbacks, four linebackers, and four safeties because of the heat.
“It’s huge. We practice into game scenarios probably as much or more than anybody in the country,” Brown said. “And so the key on that play, and Coach Powledge and the defensive staff did a great job, is they used their last timeout. And so there had to be two plays. They didn’t have enough time to get the field goal unit in. And so you call two defensive plays and you’ve got to be ready to go. And so we had two defensive calls.”
“And probably the smallest guy on our team goes in and stops him, Jaden Allen, which I think says a lot about his courage and kind of the next-man-up mentality here,” Brown continued. “He played a lot of football today and played well. He had two big stops on run plays, and that was it. That was huge momentum. If they score right there, they’re in the game. They don’t score, and then we go down and score, and all of a sudden that middle eight is flipped, and now we’re in complete control of the game.”
Jahiem White And Tayven Jackson Lead The North Texas Offense
On the first snap after halftime that mattered, White broke a 43-yard run to the UNLV 16, the longest play from scrimmage for North Texas this season. He finished the drive with a 5-yard touchdown run at 12:32 of the third quarter. Villela cut it to 27-6 with a 37-yard field goal at 10:45, and the Mean Green went 75 yards on 11 plays after that, ending with a 16-yard touchdown pass from Jackson to Max Reese at 5:39.
Brendon Haygood scored the last touchdown on a 9-yard run at 8:24 of the fourth quarter, the first of his career. De Freitas closed the scoring from 41 yards with 1:12 to play.
Jackson finished 15-of-26 for 233 yards and 2 touchdowns without an interception, and he carried 7 times for 15 yards and a score. Both touchdown passes were the first two of his North Texas career and the 17th and 18th of a career that has taken him through Tennessee, Indiana, and UCF.
White carried 12 times for 124 yards and a touchdown and caught 2 passes for 34 yards and a touchdown. The 124 rushing yards were the eighth 100-yard game of his career and his first for North Texas. Early in the fourth quarter he went past 2,000 career rushing yards. Saturday was the third game of his college career with both a rushing and a receiving touchdown.
Corri Milliner led the receivers with 3 catches for 65 yards. Justin Stevenson caught 2 for 43 and Josiah Martin caught 3 for 24. Eight North Texas players caught a pass for the second consecutive game to open the season.
North Texas reached the red zone 6 times and scored on all 6 trips, with 4 touchdowns. De Freitas went 3-of-3 on field goals and 5-of-5 on extra points.
Jackson said the defense was the most valuable player of the game.
“It’s pretty easy when you get the ball at the 40, 30-yard line,” Jackson said. “It eliminates a lot of being backed up. It eliminates the momentum. Momentum is everything in college football, so it gives us great momentum, a great energy to go down there and put the ball in the end zone.”
North Texas Defense Ends UNLV’s 36-Game Scoring Streak
Arnold, a Denton Guyer product who won the Gatorade National Football Player of the Year award in high school before stops at Oklahoma and Auburn, completed 18-of-27 for 194 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions. He carried 14 times for minus-11 yards. UNLV as a team ran 39 times for 98 yards and was sacked 4 times for 35 yards.
The Rebels put the ball on the ground 5 times and lost 3 of them. Bryce Garza picked off backup quarterback Alex Orji with 22 seconds left for the fourth takeaway and the first interception of his career.
CJ Coombes led North Texas with 7 tackles. David Onuoha had 6 tackles and 1.5 sacks. Brenden Reese finished with 5 tackles, a sack, and a fumble recovery, and Barker had 5 tackles, a half-sack, a pass breakup, and a fumble recovery.
Rhodes ran that play all week and went into the drive expecting to be the one who came free.
“It definitely was a focus this week, overly. We had guys walk around in the facility with a football,” Rhodes said. “Everybody had to get a shot on the ball. It’s just like, you are what you do, or you are how you operate. So that’s something that we made a point of emphasis this weekend. We made sure we got our shots on the ball prior to the game.”
Brown wanted the game called aggressively on both sides so the players could feel the confidence behind the calls and go execute them.
“We’re better on both lines of scrimmage. And I don’t mean that in a humble way. I don’t mean that in a bad way,” Brown said. “We were better, and we felt like we were on video, and then we played that way today. And I think that’s a good football team. They won 10-plus games last year. They’re going to be good. This is a tough trip. They went from Hawaii last Saturday night. They played a night game in Hawaii and then had to come and play in this heat. That’s a tough ask. And so I don’t think that necessarily their best version showed up today. But we played it. And that’s not a takeaway from our guys either. But I thought we were clearly the better team, the more physical team up front.”
North Texas is the first team to hold UNLV under 20 points since Iowa State held the Rebels to 3 on Sept. 18, 2021. The 301 total yards were the fewest the Mean Green have allowed since Washington State gained 275 on Sept. 13, 2025. Not since a 45-3 win over UTSA on Sept. 21, 2019, had a North Texas defense kept an FBS opponent out of the end zone.
UNLV still leads the series 5-2. The only other North Texas win came in the Heart of Dallas Bowl in January 2014, at the end of the 2013 season.
Brown is the first North Texas head coach to win his home debut since Darrell Dickey beat Nevada 27-21 at Fouts Field in 1998. Saturday was also his second meeting with UNLV coach Dan Mullen. The first came on Oct. 10, 2015, when Mullen’s Mississippi State team beat Brown’s Troy squad 45-17 in Starkville.
The official temperature at the 2:50 p.m. CT kickoff was 100 degrees, the third-hottest home game in program history. North Texas opened the season with 70 newcomers, part of 215 new players over the past three seasons, the most in FBS in that span.
The Mean Green (1-1) play at Texas State next Saturday at 11 a.m. CT in San Marcos. The game airs on USA Network.
