SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 Freshman returner Mana Carvalho had Rice-Eccles Stadium rocking late in the third quarter Saturday night.<\/p>\n
After No. 24 Utah’s defense forced one of many three-and-out series against No. 17 Cincinnati, Carvalho split the defenders and got into a foot race to the north end zone before stretching his arms out at the end of the run as Cincinnati attempted to stop the return short of the end zone.<\/p>\n
But Carvalho couldn’t be denied in his 78-yard run and went the distance, giving Utah a 38-14 lead with 1:36 left in the third quarter of a pivotal Big 12 matchup \u2014 one in which Utah needed to stay alive in the conference title race.<\/p>\n
Carvalho became the first Utah player to return a punt for a touchdown since former Utah receiver Britain Covey did it against Oregon in 2021.<\/p>\n
Utah (7-2, 4-2 Big 12) left no doubt on the field and pulled away for a 45-14 win over Cincinnati (7-2, 5-1 Big 12), who dropped its first conference game of the season Saturday.<\/p>\n
Receiver Ryan Davis led the Utes with 132 receiving yards and one touchdown \u2014 including a 46-yard catch \u2014 to help Utah to 480 total yards of offense in the win.<\/p>\n
Quarterback Devon Dampier, who returned back to the starting lineup after a week off due to injury, finished the game throwing for 213 yards, two touchdown and an interception on 16-of-31 passing, while adding 71 rushing yards.<\/p>\n
His counterpart, Brendan Sorsby, on Cincinnati finished with one of his worst performances of the season, throwing for 221 yards, one touchdown and an interception on 11-of-33 passing.<\/p>\n
Utah started the night affair off with quick defensive stop and then a 16-play, 94-yard drive that was capped off with a quick strike from Dampier to Davis, who took it 34 yards for an opening drive score.<\/p>\n
But Cincinnati bounced back with a scoring drive of its own on the ensuing possession, with Sorsby utilizing back-to-back pitch plays that went for big yards, before Sorsby pulled off a fake pitch and then took it untouched into the end zone for a 22-yard score.<\/p>\n
Utah, though, took advantage when Cincinnati was stopped deep in Utah territory and missed a 42-yard field goal \u2014 the first miss of the season for Stephan Rusnak and first in multiple seasons for him \u2014 and then when Sorsby fumbled on a promising drive and Utah recovered.<\/p>\n
The Utes then went 66 yards and Dillon Curtis ended the drive with a laser a 33-yard field goal before a NaQuari Rogers bullied his way through for a 1-yard rushing touchdown on the ensuing possession to give Utah a 24-7 lead going into the halftime break.<\/p>\n
This story will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 Freshman returner Mana Carvalho had Rice-Eccles Stadium rocking late in the third quarter Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":349778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[419,418,407,171,1318,421,420,425,1317,1315,1316,50,422,1371,423,62,399,314,67,132,68,424,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-349777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-cars","9":"tag-classifieds","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-homes","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-local","16":"tag-ncaa","17":"tag-ncaa-football","18":"tag-ncaafootball","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-radio","21":"tag-recreation","22":"tag-salt-lake","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-television","25":"tag-traffic","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-unitedstates","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-utah","30":"tag-weather"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}