Kendrick Raphael rushed for 104 yards and two touchdowns against his former team to help No. 23 SMU pull away for a 59-20 ACC win against Cal on Saturday afternoon in Dallas.<\/p>\n
Raphael, who rushed for 943 yards and 13 touchdowns for Cal last season, also snared a touchdown pass from Kevin Jennings, who completed 16 of 23 attempts for 223 yards and three touchdowns.<\/p>\n
Christian Rhodes added two short touchdown runs for the Mustangs (6-1, 4-1 ACC), who outscored Cal 42-0 in the second half after trailing by three at halftime.<\/p>\n
Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele completed 27 of 37 passes for 265 yards and a touchdown for the Golden Bears (3-5, 2-3), who scored first when they moved the ball 65 yards in seven plays on their opening drive. Sagapolutele capped the march with a 10-yard touchdown pass to Chase Hendricks.<\/p>\n
After getting on the board with a 29-yard field goal from Brendan Baird, the Mustangs moved ahead 10-7 when Jennings found Raphael wide open on a wheel route that turned into a 22-yard touchdown.<\/p>\n
Cal regained a 14-10 lead when tight end Mason Mini scored on a 1-yard run off a direct snap with 10:46 left in the first half.<\/p>\n
After a 41-yard field goal by Towns McGough made it 17-10, Raphael scored on a 1-yard run on fourth down to tie it 17-17.<\/p>\n
McGough booted a 37-yard field goal as the first half expired for a 20-17 lead.<\/p>\n
SMU took the second-half kickoff and marched 61 yards on seven plays, scoring on a Rhodes 5-yard run to retake the lead 24-20.<\/p>\n
The Mustangs forced their second straight three-and-out and Jennings quickly found Derrick McFall for a 21-yard touchdown strike and a 31-20 lead.<\/p>\n
After another three-and-out, the Mustangs extended the lead to 38-20 on a 3-yard touchdown run by Rhodes with 4:04 left in the third.<\/p>\n
SMU turned it into a blowout in the fourth quarter as Raphael scored on a 1-yard plunge, Jennings hit Jalen Hale for a 17-yard score and third-stringer EJ Kelly scored on a 10-yard run.<\/p>\n
SMU, which finished with 492 total yards, did not commit a turnover for the third straight game.<\/p>\n
–Field Level Media<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Field Level Media.All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published October 24, 2026 at 4:36 PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kendrick Raphael rushed for 104 yards and two touchdowns against his former team to help No. 23 SMU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-475828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475828","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=475828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}