{"id":477387,"date":"2026-09-27T12:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T12:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/477387\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T12:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T12:46:16","slug":"watson-leads-umass-over-sacramento-state-35-6-minutemen-are-4-0-for-first-time-since-2007-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/477387\/","title":{"rendered":"Watson leads UMass over Sacramento State 35-6; Minutemen are 4-0 for first time since 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 William Watson III<\/a> threw a touchdown pass and ran for two more scores to lead Massachusetts to a 35-6 victory over Sacramento State<\/a> on Saturday night. <\/p>\n

Watson was 11-of-16 passing for 101 yards and he carried the ball seven times for 72 yards for UMass<\/a> in their Mid-American Conference opener. The Minutemen are 4-0 for the first time since 2007. <\/p>\n

Watson capped the Minutemen’s opening drive with a 13-yard touchdown run, and his 32-yard TD run made it 14-3 early in the second quarter. Watson’s 7-yard touchdown pass to Max Dowling<\/a> gave the Minutemen a 21-6 lead heading into the break. <\/p>\n

Timmy Hinspeter<\/a> intercepted a Jackson Sharmann pass and returned the ball 49 yards into the end zone to stretch the Minutemen’s lead to 28-6 early in the third quarter. Kezion Dia-Johnson<\/a> ended the scoring with a 3-yard touchdown run. <\/p>\n

Sharman was 24-of-43 passing for 221 yards for Sacramento State (1-4, 0-2). <\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

UMass: Hosts Eastern Michigan on Saturday. <\/p>\n

Sacramento State: At Bowling Green on Oct. 10.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here. Visit the Top 25 here and see AP\u2019s full college football coverage here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 William Watson III threw a touchdown pass and ran for two more scores to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1321,81064,187394,187392,121,123,122,187393,187390,187391],"class_list":["post-477387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-college-football","tag-event_recap","tag-kezion-dia-johnson","tag-max-dowling","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-timmy-hinspeter","tag-umass-minutemen","tag-william-watson-iii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}