This past Saturday at Gerald J. Ford Stadium the SMU Mustangs routed the Northwestern State demons by a score of 40 to 7.

SMU started scoring and never looked back, scoring 40 consecutive points in the game. While the Mustangs played tremendously as a team, there are certain players and individual parts of the team that stood out in the game.

Zach Line did something that not even SMU legends such as Doak Walker and Eric Dickerson could do. Zach rushed for five touchdowns setting not only an SMU school record, but also a Conference USA record. Line also is now tied for first in the country with eight rushing touchdowns on the season. When asked if this was important to him Line said, “It’s still early in the season; my Dad likes to keep track of that stuff.” Line practiced all this week and is now fully recovered from a lingering hamstring injury.

Defensive end Margus Hunt, blocked another kick in Saturday night’s game. Hunt came crashing through Northwestern State’s protection to get his eighth career field goal block which ties the NCAA football record.

Hunt now has 14 career blocked kicks which places him third all-time in NCAA history. When asked what tying the record means to him, Margus said, “Nothing, it is fun whenever we have an opportunity to take points off the board, but I was not trying for the record.” Margus has now blocked a kick in every game this season.

SMU wide receivers Cole Beasley and Darius Johnson also had nice games for the Mustangs. Beasley led the team on Saturday night with a career high 11 catches for 171 yards. Beasley made some acrobatic catches in the game, and once he caught the ball he did a great job of making defenders miss in space to gain extra yardage. Beasley also showed his versatility returning punts for the Mustangs all night. Johnson had his best game of the season as well, he added eight receptions for 127 yards.

The SMU defense pitched its first shutout since 2006.

The only points that were scored by Northwestern State were on a fumble recovered by Phil LeBlanc returned for 93 yards with less than two minutes left in the game.

The Mustang defense allowed only 126 total yards; to put that in perspective, backup quarterback Kyle Padron threw for 138 yards in very limited play time. In a postgame interview, Coach June Jones was asked if he was pleased with the defense, he said he was very pleased with how hard and physical they played.

The Mustangs play their next game on Saturday at Memphis, and will hopefully see another win and some more standout performances.