Derek Carr threw for 366 yards and four touchdowns, Josh Quezada rushed for 105 yards and a score, and No. 17 Fresno State scored 48 unanswered points in beating Wyoming 48-10 Saturday night.
Fresno State (9-0, 6-0 Mountain West) is one of five undefeated Top 25 teams. The Bulldogs, seeking a coveted BCS bowl, are joined by No. 22 Northern Illinois as the only ranked and unbeaten teams not in the Top 5 where Alabama, Florida State and Ohio State reside.
Still, coach Tim DeRuyter is aware of the skepticism among poll voters that dogs the Bulldogs.
"I know there's that talk, 'Hey, they're only sneaking by people' or whatever, but that really wasn't our goal today," DeRuyter said. "Our goal today was just play as well as we can, and we didn't early. And give Wyoming credit for that. But I thought the last three quarters of the game we played pretty well."
Wyoming (4-5, 2-3) is 0-15 against ranked teams under fifth-year coach Dave Christensen and hasn't beaten a Top 25 opponent since 2002, when the Cowboys defeated No. 24 Air Force 34-26.
Carr completed 33 of 46 passes with no interceptions before being pulled for the night with 9:45 left and the game well in hand. He has gone 229 pass attempts without an interception.
Quezada had his second consecutive (and second career) 100-yard game on 16 carries.
Brett Smith led the Cowboys, completing 18 of 32 passes for 141 yards and a touchdown. Running back Tedder Easton gained 90 yards.
The game pitted the top two offenses in the Mountain West against each other.
Wyoming got the better of the Bulldogs early, grabbing a 10-0 lead. Smith connected with Shaun Wick on a 2-yard TD pass, which was set up by Easton's 79-yard run through the middle of the Bulldogs' defense, for the only score of the first quarter. It was the first time this season Fresno State had been shut out in the opening period.
Stuart Williams added a 27-yard field goal for the Cowboys early in the second.
"They came out with a lot of energy," Carr said. "Coach hit it on the head: We're going to get everybody's best game. They came out with so much energy and so much passion. We had to take our passion and energy to another level."
Carr got Fresno State both passion and points with back-to-back touchdown drives of 75 and 73 yards - the first ending with a 9-yard TD pass to Marcel Jensen and the second on a 19-yard scoring strike to Isiah Burse. They were the first scores of a 48-0 surge by the Bulldogs, who ended the game with 600 total yards on offense.
Fresno State has gained more than 500 yards in seven games and at least 600 four times this season.
Carr connected once more with Jensen on a 2-yard TD pass and with Davante Adams for a 9-yard score. Josh Harper caught nine passes for 159 yards.
Wyoming's offense, which ranked second to the Bulldogs in the conference with an average of 516.2 yards coming in, was held to 296 - including just 82 in the second half.
"The game started out the way we wanted it to," Christensen said, citing a lack of execution by his team. "The first half was exactly as we envisioned it. Obviously the second half wasn't."
In the BCS standings entering the weekend, Fresno State was in 16th place and Northern Illinois from the Mid-American Conference was 18th. The highest-rated team from the non-automatic qualifying conferences earns an automatic BCS bowl bid by finishing in the top 12 of the final BCS standings or by finishing in the top 16 ahead of a champion from an automatic qualifying conference.
