New Mexico Bowl: North Texas 13, Utah State 52

Probably not the way the Mean Green wanted to end the season:

Utah State walked into the New Mexico Bowl with one of its best records in school history but uncertainty. Its head coach, Matt Wells, left to take the Texas Tech job. Interim coach Frank Maile had to prepare the Aggies with an army of graduate assistants and an announcement a new coach was coming next month.

North Texas, meanwhile, was coming into Albuquerque with experienced coach Seth Littrell and highly touted quarterback Mason Fine.

The Aggies pushed those distractions aside Saturday.

Jordan Love threw for 359 yards and four touchdowns and Jalen Greene had six catches for 151 yards and a score to help Utah State rout North Texas 52-13.

It didn’t help that Mason Fine was injured in the first quarter, but his absence had nothing to do with the fact that UNT’s defense was torched for 556 total yards and gave up passing scores of 72 and 67 yards. Utah State's defense also preyed on UNT's passing game, picking the Mean Green off four times.

It was a tough way to end a 2018 season that saw the Mean Green notch nine wins for the second season in a row, including a win at Arkansas (that featured this hilarious trick play). North Texas has now lost three bowl games in a row, and the Denton Record-Chronicle's Brett Vito wonders if the window for that elusive bowl victory is closing for the Mean Green:

UNT has raised the bar in three seasons under Littrell.

He’s raised it to the point that there is an uneasy feeling among the Mean Green faithful after the Aggies blasted UNT 52-13 at Dreamstyle Stadium.

College football — and college athletics in general — is all about capitalizing on the rare windows of opportunity to vault a program forward.

UNT is in one of those windows now, thanks to the pairing of Littrell and quarterback Mason Fine.

Fine is one of the best quarterbacks in program history. Littrell is well on his way to carving out a significant legacy with the Mean Green.

UNT has capitalized to a certain extent. The Mean Green have played in bowl games in each of the past three seasons and won the Conference USA West Division last year. That’s a significant step forward.

It just isn’t enough to satisfy Littrell, Fine or anyone else. A bowl win has been UNT’s goal from Day 1 of the Littrell era.

The chase will now extend into the fourth season of Littrell’s tenure that will also be Fine’s final year at UNT.

The Mean Green are 0-for-4 in championship games when you count those three bowl games and last season’s Conference USA title game loss to Florida Atlantic.

The state of the UNT football program is much better today than it was just a few years ago, but the big prizes - a Conference USA championship, a bowl victory, perhaps even a season-ending top 25 ranking - have yet to be realized. With a quarterback entering his final season and a head coach that continues to attract attention from other programs, 2019 could very well be a "now-or-never" type of season in Denton.