No. 23 SMU Beats Cal 59-20 as Kevin Jennings Breaks School TD Record, Mustangs Score 42 Straight

Eleven months ago, Kendrick Raphael ran 2 yards into the end zone with 43 seconds left in Berkeley and knocked SMU out of the ACC title game. On Saturday, he was standing on the other sideline in Dallas, wearing red and blue, and he spent the afternoon making sure Cal felt every bit of that switch.

Raphael ran for 104 yards and scored three touchdowns against his old team, Kevin Jennings became the most prolific touchdown passer in SMU history, and No. 23 SMU turned a 20-17 halftime deficit into a 59-20 blowout at Gerald J. Ford Stadium. The second half finished 42-0. It was not a comeback so much as a demolition with a scoreboard attached.

SMU moves to 6-1 and 4-1 in the ACC. California falls to 3-5 and 2-3, with four losses in its last five games.

Cal brought the whole playbook

For 30 minutes, the Golden Bears looked like the better team, and they looked like a team that had spent the week drawing up trick plays on a napkin. Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, back as the starter for the first time since a concussion at UNLV on Oct. 3, marched Cal down the field on the opening drive and hit Chase Hendricks for a 10-yard touchdown.

SMU answered with a Brendan Baird field goal and then a gutsy one from Jennings, a 22-yard strike to Raphael on a wheel route on fourth-and-2 that put the Mustangs up 10-7. It was Jennings' 72nd career touchdown pass, tying Tanner Mordecai's school record.

Cal kept swinging. A successful fake punt. A surprise onside kick. Then, on fourth down in field goal range, holder Dominic Ingrassia took off for a first down on a fake, and Mason Mini punched in a 1-yard direct-snap run to make it 14-10. Towns McGough added a 41-yard field goal for a 17-10 lead.

Sagapolutele was sharp and comfortable, completing 19 of 23 passes for 214 yards in the first half. Cal piled up 255 yards before the break, and for a team that had lost 41-7 to Wake Forest the week before, the whole thing felt like a reset.

Fourth down kept SMU breathing

The thing about SMU's first half is that it was alive only because Rhett Lashlee kept going for it. The Mustangs converted three fourth downs on their two first-half touchdown drives, and the second one tied the game. Jennings found Theo Melin Ohrstrom for 27 yards to set it up, and Raphael plowed in from the 1 on fourth down with 1:57 left in the half. It was 17-17.

Cal still had time, and McGough drilled a 37-yarder on the final play of the half. 20-17, Golden Bears. Nobody in the stadium could have guessed that would be Cal's last point of the day.

The turning point: 42 unanswered

Whatever was said in the SMU locker room should be bottled and sold. Cal opened the third quarter with a three-and-out, and the Mustangs went 67 yards in seven plays, with freshman Christian Rhodes scoring from 5 yards out for the first touchdown of his career. SMU led 24-20, and the floodgates came off their hinges.

Cal went three-and-out again. Jennings dropped a 21-yard touchdown pass into the arms of Derrick McFall, and that was No. 73, a new SMU career record. Cal went three-and-out a third straight time, and Rhodes scored from the 3 with 4:04 left in the third quarter to make it 38-20.

The fourth quarter was a victory lap. Raphael added his second 1-yard touchdown run, Jennings hit Jalen Hale for a 17-yarder with 6:29 left, and third-string running back EJ Kelly capped it with a 10-yard run. SMU scored a touchdown on each of its six second-half possessions and seven straight drives dating back to the first half.

Jennings, the record and the receipts

Jennings did not need a monster stat line to make history. He went 16-of-23 for 223 yards and three touchdowns, added 26 yards on the ground and did not turn it over. That is three straight games without a giveaway for the SMU offense.

The record puts him atop the SMU leaderboard with 73 touchdown passes, and he also owns the program marks for career passing yards (9,766) and completions (781). He is 25-8 as a starter.

"Just all the great quarterbacks that came through here and being able to surpass them, it's an amazing feeling," Jennings said.

Lashlee kept his assessment simpler. "He just continues to do what he does best, which is win," he said.

Raphael's revenge tour

Raphael ran for 943 yards and 13 touchdowns at Cal last season, and he was the man who scored the winning touchdown in that 38-35 upset that cost SMU a trip to the ACC Championship Game. He transferred to Dallas, and on Saturday he carried 22 times for 104 yards, caught the wheel-route touchdown and scored twice on the ground. Two of his three scores came on fourth down.

Lashlee had the best line of the day on that one. "I just told him I'm glad he's in the right jersey this time," he said.

The numbers that tell the story

The halftime box score and the final box score look like two different games, because they were. SMU gained 492 total yards, and 306 of them came after the break. Cal managed 50 yards and two first downs in the entire second half.

The ground game was the real gap. SMU ran for 256 yards. Cal ran 28 times for 40 yards, a season low, and the Bears have now gone five straight games without reaching 100 rushing yards. When a team cannot run, every third down becomes third-and-long, and SMU's pass rush began teeing off on Sagapolutele, who finished with 265 passing yards and a touchdown, with only 51 of those yards coming after halftime.

Then there were the flags. Cal was penalized 11 times for more than 100 yards, including two 15-yard penalties that helped SMU's first scoring drive. Lupoi has said the team keeps working on penalties in practice, and they showed up again at the worst possible time.

What it means

SMU is right where it wants to be. The Mustangs are 4-1 in the ACC, tied with Wake Forest behind unbeaten Miami, and they are 11-0 at home since joining the league in 2024. They are 24-2 in their last 26 games in Dallas and averaging 44 points in those games. SMU's own game recap (opens in a new tab) leans into the second-half surge, and it should.

Next on the schedule was a trip to Syracuse, SMU's only road game in a seven-week stretch that also included five home games and an open date. Last season, a late loss to Cal kept the Mustangs out of Charlotte. This season, the path looked wide open.

For Cal, the math has turned ugly. The Bears need to win out to finish with a winning record in Tosh Lupoi's first season, and next on the schedule was a trip to NC State on Oct. 31, the second of three straight road games. Cal's postgame recap (opens in a new tab) does not hide from how the second half went.

The last word

Lupoi summed up the afternoon in one sentence. "To be winning at half and come out the way we did is really disappointing," he said.

That undersells it a little. Cal played its best half in weeks, threw everything it had at a ranked team, and still lost by 39. SMU, meanwhile, showed exactly what it looks like when an offense with a record-setting quarterback stops wasting downs. If the Mustangs keep playing second halves like this one, nobody is going to keep them out of the ACC title game this year, not even Kendrick Raphael. He is on their side now.

Sources: SMU Athletics, Cal Athletics, The Associated Press, ESPN, FOX Sports, Field Level Media, Sports Illustrated's Cal On SI and Write For California. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: SMU Athletics.