COLLEGE FOOTBALL Thursday’s games


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Florida State 26, N.C. State 17

RALEIGH, N.C. — Christian Ponder threw for the go-ahead touchdown and Antone Smith ran for a score for Florida State. Smith finished with 89 yards rushing for the Seminoles (5-1, 2-1 Atlantic Coast Conference), who trailed by four points early in the final quarter before scoring 13 straight to end the game. Bert Reed added the 17-yard catch for the lead and Graham Gano kicked four field goals — including a 53-yarder with 1:53 left to seal the win. Russell Wilson threw for 181 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Wolfpack (2-5, 0-3). The game marked a homecoming for Seminoles assistant Chuck Amato, who led the Wolfpack program for seven years before being fired at the end of the 2006 season and replaced by Tom O’Brien. Amato won 49 games and reached five bowl games, with most of that success coming during the career of four-year starter and NFL first-round draft pick Philip Rivers at quarterback. Last year, the Wolfpack started 1-5 in O’Brien’s first season heading into the off week, but came out of the break with four straight wins that put bowl eligibility within reach before closing with consecutive losses. The Wolfpack came out of this year’s break with another surge — this one behind a once-anemic ground game. N.C. State entered with an ACC-worst 80 yards rushing per game and faced the league’s top run defense (64 yards per game), but rolled to a season-best 157 yards on 22 carries. Jamelle Eugene led the team with 74 yards on six carries, while Andre Brown added 50 yards.

TCU 32, No. 9 BYU 7

FORT WORTH, Texas — BYU can stop worrying about reaching the BCS. TCU made sure of that in an ironic twist of revenge. Jonathan Dalton threw two touchdowns, receiver Jeremy Kerley became a running threat and TCU beat the ninth-ranked Cougars, snapping their 16-game winning streak that was the longest in major college football. When the Cougars were last in Fort Worth two years ago, they snapped TCU’s 13-game winning streak that was then the nation’s longest. BYU (6-1, 2-1 Mountain West) never had a chance this time, not with Kerley, a former high school quarterback, taking direct snaps and running all over the place for the Frogs (7-1, 4-0) and their smothering top-ranked defense. Max Hall, who had been sacked only twice over the first six games, was sacked four times before halftime, and two more after that. His fumble set up TCU’s first touchdown and he threw an interception that led to another score by the Frogs — all in the first quarter.

Associated Press