Week 14: North Texas at Florida International

North Texas has what Florida International wants: A win. In fact, UNT has two and it wants more.

The Sun Belt’s bottom two teams have a combined five wins in two years, all by UNT. Either team could finish the 2007 season on a high note with a rare victory.

FIU carries the nation’s longest losing streak at 23 consecutive defeats. First-year coach Mario Cristobal hopes to avoid his team finishing a second straight winless season.

“We were fired up last week, but we took a hit (with a 55-23 loss to rival Florida Atlantic),” Cristobal said. “But we’re hungry, and our guys are back and fired up for this one. (Our coaching staff) came in here knowing we had a hole to dig out of and some young players to do it with. We’re just going to stick with the process to get to our goals, and that’s winning football games and championships.”

The Mean Green have already reached that first goal, at least in a reasonable fashion. UNT has shown marked improvement under first-year coach Todd Dodge with recent close losses and a 27-26 win over Western Kentucky last week.

“Last week put a twinkle in (our players’) eyes, and that was evident,” Dodge said. “When you lose so many heart-breakers like we have, the locker room just isn’t that fun. But last week gave our guys a taste of winning, and they certainly want that again.”

The teams’ makeup points to a reasonably high-scoring affair.

UNT has allowed a national-high 46 points per game, but FIU closely trails at 41 points given up per game. But the discrepancy may come on the other side, where UNT may simply have too much offense for FIU to match. The Mean Green’s wide-open offense averages 25 points per game and it scored 62 in a loss to Navy three weeks ago. FIU has scored only 18 TDs in 11 games, by far the fewest in the country. FIU’s offense has shown recent life, averaging 25 points over the last three games. The question is whether or not the Golden Panthers can consistently score against one of the nation’s worst defense and contend with UNT’s offensive pace.

UNT freshman quarterback Giovanni Vizza has not thrown a TD pass in two games, but senior running back Jamario Thomas has picked up the slack with five rushing TDs in the last two contests. Thomas’ 147 yards last week marked his highest rushing performance since leading the nation in rushing yards per game as a freshman in 2004.

UNT by 10