By Tiffany Williams –
TULANE JUST ENDED NORTH TEXAS’ FAIRY TALE SEASON WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER, and the Mean Green are going to be feeling this one until their bowl-game breakfast buffet. What was billed as a breakout, program-changing night for North Texas instead turned into a one-sided demolition in New Orleans, a 34-21 Tulane win that wasn’t even remotely as close as the score pretends.
North Texas strutted into Yulman Stadium with the swagger of an 11-2 upstart that had shattered records, silenced doubters and turned freshman QB Drew Mestemaker into some kind of football folk hero. And on their first drive? A masterpiece. Fifteen plays. Seventy-five yards. Touchdown. UNT fans surely thought the coronation had begun. But after that moment of bliss, the Mean Green offense, the same one that had bludgeoned defenses all year, vanished like it missed curfew.
Tulane didn’t just respond — they slammed the door, locked it, and swallowed the key. Jake Retzlaff marched the Green Wave down the field on a 16-play equalizer and then the avalanche hit. The Tulane defense forced a fumble. Tulane scored. Tulane forced a stop. Tulane kicked a field goal. North Texas coughed up a muffed punt. Tulane scored again. And by halftime Tulane wasn’t just in control; they were suffocating UNT under a 24-7 pile of frustration, mistakes and regret.
Then Tulane’s defense decided to make it personal. Chris Rodgers jumped a fourth-down pass and brought it back 35 yards for a touchdown, blowing the game open at 31-7 and delivering the kind of gut punch North Texas had managed to avoid all season. Mean Green defenders were huffing, the offense was pressing, and Mestemaker — who has spent all season looking like a video-game quarterback — suddenly looked mortal. Three interceptions. Five sacks. Pressure everywhere. The kid has thrown for 4,129 yards, broken conference and program records, and turned himself into a walking highlight reel… but Tulane didn’t care. They hunted him.
And every time North Texas tried to rally — the 59-yard bomb to Miles Coleman, the Ashton Gray touchdown run, the two-point conversion — Tulane had an answer. Patrick Durkin drilled a 52-yarder, the longest in school history since 1997, and added to a night where he tied the school record with five made field goals. The last gasp came when Jahiem Johnson jumped another Mestemaker pass in the final minutes, hammering down the last nail in UNT’s title hopes.
Meanwhile, Tulane’s star safety Jack Tchienchou played like a man auditioning for every award the sport offers. Forced fumble. Recovery. Interception. Nine tackles. It was the first time a Tulane player had pulled off that trifecta since 2010, and the first time any player had done it in an FBS conference title game since 2017. He walked out with the Most Outstanding Player trophy because how could he not?
Tulane’s domination was total. They outgained UNT 463-140 on their side of the stat sheet. They dominated rushing yards 175-20. They forced four turnovers and five sacks. They held UNT to a season-low 21 points and dragged their high-flying passing attack down by more than 100 yards below average.
Retzlaff added to his own pile of program history: 16 rushing TDs this season, the most ever by a Tulane quarterback and trailing only Matt Forte and Tyjae Spears on the all-time single-season list. The guy just keeps stacking records and then casually walking away from them like it’s not a big deal.
Tulane, with all their consistency, toughness and pure spite on defense, now has 11 wins again — matching the 2022 team and landing in the top three seasons in school history. They’ve won 43 of their last 55 games since 2022, turned the American Conference into their home office, and on Sunday they’ll find out who gets the privilege of being their next postseason victim.
Meanwhile, North Texas walks away wondering how in the world the team that had scored 30+ in every game this season suddenly got stuffed into a shoebox. Sure, they outgained Tulane 415-344, but those numbers are fool’s gold. The turnovers killed them. The sacks buried them. The missed red-zone opportunities torched them. The muffed punt doomed them. Their own coach summed it up best: “We scored, they matched us, and then we went flat for a while… Good teams make you pay.” Tulane did.
The Mean Green still get a bowl game. They still get a shot at a program-record 12 wins. They still have a quarterback who rewrote history with 4,129 yards, one of only five freshmen in FBS history to hit the 4,000 mark. They still had explosive plays — Coleman’s 125-yard night and the 59-yard rocket down the sideline kept the game from going fully off the rails. But for all the big numbers, all the comebacks, all the swagger, UNT finally hit a wall too big to climb.
Tulane was faster. Tulane was meaner. Tulane was more physical. Tulane was simply built for this stage — and North Texas walked right into a program that has spent four straight years in this title game and looked ticked off that anyone thought they could lose it.
North Texas didn’t just get beat. They got exposed. Tulane dragged them into a kind of game they haven’t had to play all season: one where they get punched in the mouth and have to respond under pressure. And when it happened? The Mean Green wilted.
Tulane isn’t just heading to the playoff conversation — they’re strutting in, chest out, record book in one hand, sledgehammer in the other.
And North Texas? They’ll spend the next month trying to forget the night Tulane took their dream season, turned it inside out, and sent them back to Denton with a lesson:
You can’t win a championship when the other team takes your strength, crushes it, and then dances on the remains.
Tulane didn’t just win.
Tulane owned the night.
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