Three takeaways from New Mexico State's win over Lamar

LAS CRUCES - The last time New Mexico State won three games in a row was during the Aggies Arizona Bowl run in 2017.

NM State improved to 4-5 in Jerry Kill's first season as head coach with a 51-14 victory over FCS program Lamar on Saturday at Aggie Memorial Stadium.

NM State will close out their schedule on the road at Missouri next week and Liberty in two weeks.

Prior to kickoff on Saturday, NM State athletics director Mario Moccia said he's optimistic that the program will play a home game on Dec. 3, in a makeup game for the Oct. 22 postponed game against San Jose State.

New Mexico State routs Lamar for third straight win this season

"My confidence level has gone up significantly," Moccia said. "There is a university out there that has a draft contract in hand to play Dec. 3 at Noon. I don't want to give too many details because I don't want to blow it up while it's still being discussed and negotiated. In a perfect world, we will have a signed document early/mid-week and then get to planning that game."

Here are three takeaways from the Aggies win on Saturday:

Aggies have blown out lesser teams

The Aggies have played some of the worst teams in the country this season, but I'm not going to diminish what they have done in their current three-game win streak.

After all, let's remember that the 2017 Arizona Bowl champions didn't beat a team with an above .500 record until they beat Utah State in the bowl game.

What stands out to me about this year's team is the Aggies have won by multiple scores in their four wins this year, with the closest win coming on the road at Massachusets.

The Aggies completely controlled the game against Hawaii (45-26), New Mexico (21-9) and Lamar (51-14), winning those games by an average of 22.7 points.

"I feel like it says that we are learning how to win," Aggies defensive lineman Izaiah Reed said. "Games like that, it's really easy to play down to the competition, but we have been focusing on it and Coach Kill has been expressing to us that any team on any given Saturday can beat anybody. We have been really focused and locked in. I think that's huge and shows the growth of our football team."

I believe confidence carries over from week to week in the sport of football and following next week's game at Missouri, I'm interested to see how the Aggies do at Liberty, a future Conference USA rival who was ranked No. 19 this week before losing at Connecticut on Saturday.

Pavia puts back-to-back games together

After coming off the bench two weeks ago to lead the Aggies to a win at UMass, Pavia started on Saturday and was 11 for 16 passing for 100 yards and two touchdowns to go with 81 rushing yards.

In the past two games, Pavia is completing 64 percent of his passes (18 for 28) for 294 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions.

While he completed multiple passes down the field against UMass, Pavia took what the defense gave him on Saturday. Pavia's longest completion was 30 yards, which was actually a swing pass to running back Star Thomas in the flat that Thomas took for a touchdown.

Pavia's ability as a runner also helped set up his second touchdown, a bootleg short pass to tight end Thomaz Whitford.

"Overall as far as throwing the ball and running the football team and playing with a faster pace, I think the last game and a half, (Pavia) has made a lot of strides," Kill said.

Aggies defense takes ball away three times

Entering Saturday's game, the New Mexico State defense had forced five turnovers.

The Aggies forced three on Saturday with two interceptions and a fumble recovery. As good as the Aggies defense has been (NM State moved to No. 35 in total defense after allowing 254 yards on Saturday), they have not forced turnovers.

It has been a focus in practice.

"(Defensive backs coach Cliff Odom) is big on turnovers so he tells us every week to not be surprised when plays like that comes to us so it wasn't a surprise that we got those three turnovers," Aggies defensive lineman Lama Lavea said.

Lavea had a fumble recovery at the Lamar 35 that led to an Aggies touchdown and defensive back Andre Seldon returned an interception 19 yards to the end zone on Lamar's first possession to put the Aggies on the scoreboard.

"It's definitely been a point that we have been trying to focus on during these last couple weeks," Aggies defensive lineman Izaiah Reed said. "I feel it started to show more.

"You always want to start a game off hot. Our coaches talk about having juice and we set the juice early with that play."

Jason Groves can be reached at 575-541-5459 or jgroves@lcsun-news.com. Follow him on Twitter @jpgroves.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Three takeaways from New Mexico State's win over Lamar