North Texas vs. UNLV, 2014 Heart of Dallas Bowl: Mean Green pour it on late

Wisconsin’s final four drives: 21 plays, 88 yards (4.2 per play), three turnovers, and a turnover on downs. Phillips, who did captain the Badgers to the Big Ten title in 2012 after another Stave injury, completed just seven of 12 passes for 37 yards and was picked off twice. A kick return touchdown kept the Badgers in the game, but South Carolina scored with six minutes left to make the score 34-24, and the Badgers had no answer.

There’s nothing saying Wisconsin would have won with Stave -- South Carolina was a much better team in close-and-late situations than Wisconsin in 2013 -- but without him, there was evidently no chance.

North Texas allowed UNLV to take the football 95 yards down the field for a touchdown on their first drive of the game. Then the defense woke up. Behind one of the more impressive all-around performances of bowl season thus far, the Mean Green cruised to a 36-14 Heart of Dallas Bowl win.

Both teams would go on to score touchdowns in garbage time, though the game was never really in question following Smith’s late touchdown grab.

“Son, sit down. Let me tell you a story. Back in 2013, my friends and I turned a football program around. We whipped conference rivals. We scared Minnesota/Georgia. We fought hard, and we ended up in the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day.”

Be it a former UNLV or North Texas player telling that story a couple of decades from now, everything about that fake quote is mostly factual. UNLV trailed Minnesota by just three points at halftime, and North Texas was tied with Georgia midway through the third.

The Cotton Bowl hosts a New Year’s Day bowl game, and it’s not, well, the Cotton Bowl. UNLV and North Texas play at the historic site in the Heart of Dallas Bowl, with television coverage starting at noon ET on ESPNU.

This is the first bowl game for North Texas since 2004, and the first for UNLV since 2000. The Mean Green started the year 2-3 with a key win over Ball State (and losses to Ohio, Georgia and Tulane), before winning five in a row, including a victory over Rice. A loss to UTSA knocked them out of contention for the conference crown, but it’s hard not to consider it a successful season for North Texas.

The UNLV Rebels are 3-0 straight-up and against the spread in the three bowl games in program history, with the most recent one coming in the Las Vegas Bowl back in 2000.

North Texas is 0-2 straight-up and against the spread over its last two bowl games and is making its first bowl appearance since 2004.