Youngstown State Beats North Dakota 31-28 on Fourth-and-19 Touchdown as Lynn Wyche-El Scores Three

Fourth-and-19 is not a down. It is a prayer with a play call attached. Youngstown State answered it anyway.

With 2:04 left at Stambaugh Stadium and a holding flag having just wiped out a go-ahead touchdown, Beau Brungard found Lynn Wyche-El from 20 yards out on fourth-and-19, and Youngstown State beat North Dakota 31-28 on Halloween. A Maximillian Johnson interception on UND's final fourth down sealed it. The Penguins moved to 7-2 overall and 5-1 in the Missouri Valley Football Conference. North Dakota fell to 6-4 and 3-3.

It was Wyche-El's third touchdown of the day, and it capped a comeback from 14 points down. North Dakota led 21-7 at halftime and 28-14 midway through the third quarter. Youngstown State scored the last 17 points of the game.

North Dakota builds a 14-point cushion

The Penguins struck first, and fast. On the opening drive, Brungard hit Wyche-El on a 49-yard touchdown, and Youngstown State led 7-0 with 11:19 still left in the first quarter.

North Dakota answered on its first possession. Jerry Kaminski capped a 67-yard drive with a 6-yard touchdown pass to Haydn Stay, although Brandon Chambers Jr. blocked the extra point, leaving UND a point short at 7-6. Remember that block. It mattered later.

Then Youngstown State handed the ball right back. Wyche-El fumbled near midfield, Ben Kamara forced it, and Ethan Boll scooped it up and returned it 17 yards to the YSU 34. Matt Lawson ripped off a 31-yard run on the next series, and Charles Langama punched in a 2-yard score for a 13-7 lead.

The next swing came on fourth down. Youngstown State drove 66 yards to the UND 9 and went for it on fourth-and-3, but Grant Noland broke up a pass from Wyche-El on a trick play. North Dakota then went on the drive of the day, a 19-play, 91-yard march that burned 8:55. It ended with some trickery of its own: Javance Tupou'ata-Johnson threw a 9-yard touchdown pass to Kaminski, the quarterback, and UND converted the two-point try to go up 21-7.

UND nearly made it worse before the half, driving to the YSU 15, but Bilal Tucker blocked a 32-yard field goal try with 37 seconds left. Two blocked kicks, four points left on the field. In a three-point game, that is the margin.

The turning point: Michael Wells

North Dakota's first possession of the second half lasted two plays. On the second, a UND pass was intercepted by Michael Wells, who returned it 21 yards to the UND 7. Jaden Gilbert scored from 5 yards out two plays later, and a 21-7 game was suddenly 21-14.

UND did respond. Kaminski led a nine-play, 75-yard drive and ran the last 11 yards himself to make it 28-14 with 8:33 left in the third. But the Penguins had found something. Evan Anderson's 73-yard punt before halftime and another that pinned UND at its own 6 kept flipping the field.

The Penguins' next score was the kind of play that makes a coach's week. Brungard threw 18 yards to Bryan Hunt near the goal line, and Hunt pitched it to Wyche-El, who finished the touchdown with 2:13 left in the third. It was 28-21, and the comeback was officially on.

Fourth-and-19

Andrew Lastovka's 37-yard field goal with 10:28 left cut it to 28-24, set up by a 24-yard Gilbert run and a 14-yard Brungard completion to Lorenzo Jenkins. North Dakota's next drive stalled after five plays, and a punt pinned the Penguins at their own 14.

What followed was a 12-play, 86-yard drive that took 6:09 and very nearly died at the doorstep. Brungard hit Fresh Walters for 33 yards to get the Penguins moving. Facing fourth-and-9 at the UND 10, Brungard threw a touchdown to Hunt, only for a Youngstown State holding penalty to erase it. Now it was fourth-and-19 from the 20, with the season's best win hanging on one throw.

Brungard looked for Wyche-El, and Wyche-El came down with it for a 20-yard touchdown with 2:04 left. Youngstown State 31, North Dakota 28.

UND got the ball back at its own 25 with 1:57 to play, and the drive went backward. An intentional grounding penalty on first down put North Dakota behind schedule, two incompletions followed, and on fourth-and-20 Johnson picked off the pass to end it. Brungard knelt twice, and that was the game.

Wyche-El's day, and the stats that mattered

Wyche-El finished with six catches for 148 yards and three touchdowns, two on straight throws from Brungard and one on the end of Hunt's lateral, and the early fumble did not cost the Penguins the game. Brungard went 19-for-29 for 268 yards and three touchdown passes with no interceptions, and added 64 rushing yards on 15 carries. Gilbert ran for 68 yards and a score, and Walters averaged 27 yards on two catches.

Defensively, Roderick Owens Jr. led the Penguins with nine tackles, Carston Marshall had eight, and Ebony Curry Jr. recorded a sack. Wells and Johnson each had an interception, and the special teams unit blocked two UND kicks.

For North Dakota, Kaminski threw for 195 yards and a touchdown, ran for 44 more and a score, and caught a touchdown pass for good measure. Lawson ran 17 times for 99 yards, and Deng Deng caught seven passes for 84. Noland had 10 tackles and the fourth-down breakup, Grant Tylutki made eight stops, and Boll and Lance Rucker each had a sack.

The overall numbers were close enough to argue about. Youngstown State outgained UND by more than 80 yards, while North Dakota had 23 first downs to the Penguins' 21 and was a perfect 3-for-3 on fourth down until the game-ending interception. The difference came down to turnovers in the second half, the blocked kicks and a fourth-and-19 conversion. The full box score (opens in a new tab) and play-by-play (opens in a new tab) are on ESPN.

What it means

For Youngstown State, this is a résumé win in a league where those decide everything. The Penguins have now won five straight since a Sept. 19 loss at South Dakota State, and at 5-1 they are firmly in the Missouri Valley race. Head coach Doug Phillips' team has beaten South Dakota, Southern Illinois and now North Dakota in that stretch. Next up is a trip to Murray State on Nov. 7, followed by a home game against Illinois State on Nov. 14.

For North Dakota, the past two weeks have been brutal. A week after South Dakota walked off No. 6 UND 26-23 in overtime at the DakotaDome, Eric Schmidt's team lost another one-score game on the road against a top opponent. UND's own pregame notes billed Youngstown State as another top-10 foe, and once again the Fighting Hawks were right there. Being right there is starting to cost them. North Dakota returns to the Alerus Center to host Illinois State on Nov. 7 and closes with Southern Illinois on Nov. 21.

The series has turned into one of the Valley's better recurring dramas. Youngstown State won 41-40 at Stambaugh in 2024, North Dakota won 35-17 in Grand Forks last season, and this one came down to a single snap.

The last word

North Dakota did enough to win for most of the afternoon. It built a 14-point lead, owned the longest drive of the game and got a takeaway on the Penguins' first real mistake. Youngstown State did enough to win at the end, and in this conference, the end is all that counts. Fourth-and-19 is supposed to be a punt, or a heave, or a postgame what-if. For the Penguins, it was a 20-yard touchdown and five straight wins.

Sources: ESPN box score and play-by-play, North Dakota Athletics and Youngstown State Athletics. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Wikimedia Commons (file photo of Stambaugh Stadium).