BOCA RATON, Fla. (KVIA) — El Paso native Gael Ochoa delivered a career-defining performance Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Pebble Hills graduate, redshirt sophomore quarterback accounted for five touchdowns in Rice\u2019s 51-49 loss to Florida Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Making his first collegiate start in place of the injured Jacurri Brown, Ochoa wasted little time making an impact.<\/p>\n
The former Pebble Hills standout opened the scoring with a 55-yard touchdown run, then broke free for another 52-yard score to give Rice a 14-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Ochoa continued to put on a show, ripping off touchdown runs of 74 and 69 yards. He finished with 259 rushing yards on just 12 carries, the second-highest single-game rushing total in Rice program history.<\/p>\n
Ochoa\u2019s performance helped Rice pile up 499 rushing yards and 608 yards of total offense.<\/p>\n
Despite the offensive explosion, the Owls struggled to slow down Florida Atlantic, which scored 51 points and took advantage of costly mistakes.<\/p>\n
Rice stayed within striking distance, and Ochoa gave his team one final push late in the fourth quarter. After Florida Atlantic extended its lead to nine points on an 82-yard punt return touchdown, Ochoa connected with Braylen Walker for a 71-yard touchdown pass.<\/p>\n
The score cut the deficit to two with 2:51 remaining.<\/p>\n
Rice\u2019s defense forced a punt, giving the Owls a chance to complete the comeback. But a 55-yard field-goal attempt fell short with 45 seconds left, sealing the two-point loss.<\/p>\n
Rice falls to 1-7 overall and 0-4 in American Conference play.<\/p>\n
The Owls have a bye week before returning to action Nov. 7 against North Texas.<\/p>\n
For Ochoa, the performance marks a major milestone for the El Paso product and could open the door to a larger role as Rice looks to finish the season strong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOCA RATON, Fla. (KVIA) — El Paso native Gael Ochoa delivered a career-defining performance Saturday. The Pebble Hills…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-475772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}