2016 Week 5

The Chippewas finally got to play a game in front of their home crowd as South Florida made the trip up to Mt. Pleasant. USF was looking to pull off an early season upset and they gave CMU a pretty tough fight.

Both teams were held scoreless in the 1st quarter and it was the Chippewas who struck first in the 2nd quarter to jump out to a 7-0 lead as QB Cooper Rush found TE Joe Porter for the TD pass. USF would answer with a TD of their own to tie the game at 7-7. A one yard TD run by QB Aaron Smith and a 15 yard TD pass from Rush to WR Mike Lee provided a little comfort as CMU went to halftime with a 21-7 lead.USF would score the lone TD of the 3rd quarter to cut CMU's lead to 21-14. The fans became restless as they expected a blowout, but CMU didn't blink. The Chippewas would add two more TD's as Smith ran for his 2nd TD of the day and Rush connected with WR Anthony Rice on a 5 yard pass to ensure the 35-14 victory.

It wasn't the prettiest game for the Chippewas, but there was bound to be some rust as CMU had been off for the past two weeks. "It's definitely a strange schedule early on as it's rare to have back-to-back weeks without a game, but the change of conference obviously caused some issues," Said Carlson. "That's no excuse though, we need to play better. Our run game was pretty much non existent and we had to rely heavily on our passing attack. I thought Cooper played terrific for us and really helped lead us to a victory. We'll take the win and move on to the next one." The next one is a big one, as the Chippewas will play their first Big 12 conference game.

CMU was led by QB Cooper Rush's 319 yards passing and 3 TD's. Freshman phenom Mike Lee continued to show he is a legit receiving threat as he hauled in 9 passes for 163 yards and one TD. WR Anthony Rice and TE Joe Porter each had a receiving TD as well. Backup QB Aaron Smith led all rusher with 41 yards on 10 carries and 2 TD's.

The Chippewas 3-0 will travel to Stillwater to face Oklahoma State in the schools first ever Big 12 Conference game.