EL PASO, Texas – Much like the winds that were gusting Saturday afternoon, the Tulsa Golden Hurricane blew through the Sun Bowl and created all kinds of havoc for UTEP, destroying the Miner defense and running the score up and getting the win, 57-28.

With the whirling dervish that was Tulsa, the Miners dropped another opportunity to become bowl eligible and fell below .500 on the final home game of the season.

From the get-go, Tulsa attacked, scoring on their first possession with a pass from quarterback G.J. Kinne to receiver Byan Burnham for a 9-yard score. After UTEP went three-and-out, Tulsa added another score thanks to a 3-yard run by Alex Singleton. From that point, the Golden Hurricane didn’t allow the Miners to get any closer than six points the rest of the game.

“Well, that certainly wasn’t the way we anticipated his game would go,” head coach Mike Price said after the game. “The team that makes the least mistakes is the team that’s going to win, and we made a boatload of them in the first half.”

The Miners came out and had several errors in on both sides of the ball as there were a number of breakdowns in coverage on the defense and errant passes, including two interceptions thrown by Carson Meger that resulted in Tulsa scores.

“We just made way too many mistakes,” Meger said. “That falls on me. I made too many mistakes and some miscues and you can’t do that against good teams. Tulsa is a good team and they capitalized on the. That’s on me.”

Kinne managed the game effectively going 19-of-25 for 283 yards passing. His lone interception came when UTEP safety Richard Spencer intercepted Kinne and downed the ball in the end zone for the touchback, to kill the Hurricane drive. It was the first interception of Spencer’s career.

From the Miner’s perspective, Tulsa ran their game plan just like they observed on film. There were little to no adjustments in the offense and the defense, as they predicted, but UTEP simply could not execute.

“We made some mistakes on third down, we had [the ball] in plus territory sometimes and couldn’t get it into the end zone,” receiver Julio Lopez said. “We felt good on offense and felt like we could move the ball, but we just didn’t come through when we needed to.”

UTEP tried to get things going with in the first half with scores from running back Joe Banyard on a 1-yard touchdown run, a safety after the Miners blocked a Tulsa punt and a 1-yard run from Leilyon Meyers to make it 21-15. Tulsa answered with a 94-yard kickoff return from Trey Watts.

“[The kick return] hurt. The wind really effected the kick and made it a short kick and that hurt the coverage coming down,” safety Wesley Miller said. “They had a perfect play just set up for the how short the kick was, the timing was perfect. It was uncharacteristic. We have been a good cover team all year.”

The Miners now begin to look forward to their last opportunity to become a .500 team as well as earning bowl eligibility. Given the challenge, there is still confidence amongst the team that they can earn a sixth win.

“We need to rebound after this. We did it after Rice and played solidly against East Carolina,” Lopez said. “We need to be able to put this one behind us, as much as it hurt, have a good week of practice, make the two-time zone trip and come out with a win.”

Next up for UTEP is the final game of the regular season against University of Central Florida 5 p.m. Nov. 25 at Bright House Networks Stadium.

Chris Avila can be reached at show@minerillustrated.com and you can follow him on Twitter at @chrisavila_01.