UNI football gets the right bounces to escape St. Thomas with a 17-10 win

Fourth-quarter fortune helped push Northern Iowa past St. Thomas, 17-10, at O’Shaughnessy Stadium in St. Paul, Minn., Saturday afternoon.

Running back Amauri Pesek-Hickson fumbled shortly after a handoff from quarterback Aidan Dunne when met by a defender, but recovered his own loose ball, spun away from the next oncoming defender and ran the remaining 10 yards on the broken play for a go-ahead 15-yard touchdown.

“Pre-snap I saw the (linebacker) and that he was going to come down (and blitz) so spin was kind of predetermined. I think I just kind of didn’t get the handoff correctly, that’s what caused the fumble,” Pesek-Hickson said. “After that — I don’t know — I just saw the ball, reacted to it and spun again and I was laughing because I had no idea that was going to happen. At least I got it back.”

UNI (2-0) running back Tye Edwards began what became the game-winning drive with a 56-yard run from the Panthers’ 10 to St. Thomas’ 34-yard line.

Edwards led all rushers with 141 yards on 15 attempts, while Pesek-Hickson finished with 86 yards to go along with his two touchdowns.

“You can see (Edwards) is a tremendous running back,” UNI Coach Mark Farley said. He’s running very well right now. Tye is a big-time back and he’s playing that way every time he’s out there.”

St. Thomas (0-2) opened the scoring in the first quarter with a nine-play, 80-yard drive capped by a 13-yard touchdown pass from Micahel Rostberg to Patrick Wagner.

UNI evened the score early in the second quarter with its own 80-yard drive in 11 plays. A 24-yard pass from Dunne to Sergio Morancy got the Panthers in the red zone and, four plays later Pesek-Hickson scored his first touchdown of the game with a 3-yard run.

The Tommies regained the lead late in the third quarter with a 50-yard field goal from Stephen Shagen, but UNI answered with a field goal drive of its own early in the fourth quarter after a blocked punt provided prime field position at St. Thomas’ 7. Caden Palmer bounced back from a 28-yard miss in the first quarter with his first career make from 19 yards to re-tie the score at 10.

UNI’s passing game failed to establish a rhythm against the Tommies as Dunne finished 11-of-25 for 99 yards with no touchdowns or interceptions.

“It was very disappointing (from) the offense. Very disappointing,” Farley said. “With the talent they have and the things they did, we’ve got to get a lot better. We’ve got good receivers. We’re not throwing the ball well enough right now.”

Panthers safety Jonathan Cabral-Martin led all tacklers with 13, while linebacker Ben Belken joined him in double figures with 10.

UNI travels to Nebraska (1-0) next Saturday. Kickoff at Memorial Stadium is at 6:30 p.m. (BTN).

“We kept our poise. We kept our wits about ourselves and that was key,” Farley said. “I could see last night at dinner — meetings were good — you just sense stuff. I’ve seen enough teams when they get ready to play and this one wasn’t terrible, but you could sense it wasn’t what it was last week.”