The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team had just swung the pendulum in its favor after forcing a turnover with 12:38 to play against Wofford on Saturday.
In a span of 37 seconds, there was a massive swing back in the Terriers' direction.
The Mocs weren't able to muster a first down after the takeaway, with three straight incomplete passes. On the Terriers' next play from scrimmage, quarterback Joe Newman sprinted untouched for a 66-yard score to seal a 21-10 Wofford win in front of 8,010 at Finley Stadium.
UTC fell to 4-2 and 2-2 in the Southern Conference and plays this week at Western Carolina, which lost 66-28 at Samford on Saturday. Wofford - ranked seventh in the STATS FCS poll and sixth by Football Championship Subdivision coaches - is 4-1, 3-0 in the league.
"Early on in the game, we struggled to get stops," Mocs coach Tom Arth said. "They went downfield pretty effortlessly in the first two possessions. From there, we really made some adjustments on the defensive side and got a number of stops, and I thought we played really well. Other than that really big run, I thought defensively we played really well and made some adjustments.
" We have to do a good job of feeding off each other, and in the first half we didn't do that. The offense had opportunities to get it going early, and we couldn't stop them defensively. Then we got stops defensively and we couldn't consistently put drives together on offense. When you play a team like that, stops are so critical, and when you get stops you have to be able to go downfield and translate that into points, and we didn't do a good job of that."
The UTC offense became one-dimensional for a third straight week, with its ground game held to 21 yards on 16 carries. In the past five halves - finishing a win over Samford and losing to East Tennessee State and Wofford - the Mocs have a combined 87 rushing yards on 55 carries.
Mocs quarterback Nick Tiano completed 21 of 33 passes, but those completions went for only 176 yards and one touchdown as the Terriers were content with letting him hit passes in front of them and take away UTC's downfield passing attack.
UTC's longest play from scrimmage was a 14-yard completion from Tiano to Wil Young, who totaled 55 yards on six catches. Bryce Nunnelly had 47 yards on eight receptions and an 11-yard score on the game's first possession - the culmination of the Mocs' best drive of the game as they went 75 yards on 13 plays.
The Mocs had 108 yards in the first quarter and led 10-7 after a Victor Ulmo season-long 42-yard field goal with 43 seconds to go in the period. They had 30 plays gaining 78 yards over the final three quarters.
Wofford's offense started off explosively as well, and while the Terriers never really slowed down, the Mocs did a good job of forcing punts as the game went along. The Terriers' first two drives gained 152 yards and ended in touchdowns by Newman and Lennox McAfee, and while Wofford would finish with 511 yards of total offense, 442 on the ground, the Mocs were still in the game and had the momentum on their side after Marshall Cooper chased down T.J. Luther deep in UTC territory and knocked the ball out of his hands.
D.J. Jackson recovered the fumble and gained 12 yards to give UTC possession with 12:38 to go in a four-point game.
The Mocs' offense responded with a possession that took 17 seconds off the clock with three consecutive incompletions and a punt. Next up came Newman's big play.
"In a game like this, when the defense gives you the ball, you've got to go score points," Tiano said. "You've got to score a touchdown and take the lead. You can't keep putting those guys (UTC defense) on the field, because with an offense like that it's a physical game and they're worn out.
"We've got to find a way to score there."
UTC did follow with an eight-play drive into Wofford territory, but a fourth-down pass from Tiano to Nunnelly that would have been a first down was dropped with 8:55 to play.
Michael Bean had 17 tackles to lead the Mocs. Brandon Dowdell had 12 and Isaiah Mack 10, but the defense was unable to penetrate the Wofford offensive line, and Bean and Dowdell combined for UTC's only tackle behind the line of scrimmage.
Still, much like last season's game against The Citadel, when the Mocs gave up 405 yards on the ground but lost by only six points, the UTC defense bent but didn't break.
"We made a few changes to the scheme to be able to be in better position to stop the dive up the middle and have an affirmed quarterback player," Bean said. "The adjustments we made were great and I really thought we were stopping them, but every play they're going to keep pounding until they see somebody mess it up ,and they're going to go right back to it. As soon as they see it, they're going after it, and on the four or five big plays they had, somebody gave it up.
"But we're OK. We have to keep going and keep working."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.