But after the win, Mensah \u2013 like his coach \u2013 was focused on how the Hurricanes can continue improving.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just a testament to my o-line. I think they played an excellent game up front,\u201d Mensah said of his record-breaking numbers. \u201cBut to be honest, I can\u2019t even be that happy about it with how the second half went. \u2026<\/p>\n
“You\u2019ve just got to rely on your teammates. I think we did that offensively. Our defense played a huge game in the second half, got huge fourth-down stops, so huge kudos to them. But yean, we\u2019ve just got to be better offensively, execute better and I\u2019ve got to be better on early downs.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Wake Forest held the Hurricanes (3-0, 2-0 ACC) to just one-second half score, Miami opened the game the way it opened its first two: with a touchdown.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes took the opening kick and marched down the field on a methodical, 14-play, 92-yard drive that took 7:33 off the clock and ended when Mensah connected with Joshua Moore<\/a> on a 9-yard scoring pass.<\/p>\n Wake Forest, though, answered.<\/p>\n The Demon Deacons (2-1, 0-1) became the first opposing offense to score on the Miami defense this season, capping an 11-play, 75-yard drive when quarterback Gio Lopez connected with Kamrean Johnson on a 10-yard touchdown pass.<\/p>\n Then came Miami\u2019s offensive barrage.<\/p>\n The Hurricanes scored 24 unanswered points and pushed their lead to 31-7 with 8:56 left in the third quarter while Mensah continued his ascent in both the Miami and ACC record books.<\/p>\n First came the 21-yard touchdown pass to Elija Lofton<\/a>. Then Fletcher scored on a 1-yard run. That was followed by a 27-yard field goal from Jake Weinberg<\/a> just before halftime.<\/p>\n And on Miami\u2019s first drive of the second half, Mensah tossed a 2-yard scoring pass to Toney that sent a good number of Wake Forest fans to the exits.<\/p>\n Those fans would miss the Demon Deacons\u2019 attempt at a comeback.<\/p>\n Wake Forest scored a pair of unanswered touchdowns to cut the deficit to 31-20 after Lopez engineered a pair of scoring drives that ended with the signal caller completing scoring passes to Jack Foley and Carlos Hernandez.<\/p>\n Lopez finished the night completing 29 of 46 passes for 312 yards with three touchdowns.<\/p>\n Miami\u2019s offense, meanwhile, struggled to find the same rhythm it had in the first half.<\/p>\n The Hurricanes were forced to punt on four consecutive second-half possessions and had a field goal blocked on another one of their drives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But after the win, Mensah \u2013 like his coach \u2013 was focused on how the Hurricanes can continue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-405353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}