A week after the ecstasy of ending its 20-game losing streak, the UTEP football team Saturday encountered a harsher reality in a rough 48-32 loss to Middle Tennessee.
The Miners are still a long, long ways from being good.
The Blue Raiders, with an almost magical quarterback in senior Brent Stockstill, are quite good, and the difference on this day was profound. A Miner team that hadn't been blown out in two months was behind 14-0 before its second snap, 27-10 at the intermission and 42-18 before a late, mostly cosmetic fight back.
Middle went to 7-3, UTEP fell to 1-9 and if there was a swelled head after the win against Rice, the Miners found the remedy for that in the opening moments of this one.