SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Texas-San Antonio scored early and often Saturday, and Southern Miss never could catch up.

Jalen Rhodes rushed for 165 yards with three touchdowns as UTSA beat Southern Miss 55-32 to snap a three-game losing streak.

UTSA (2-3, 1-1 Conference USA) scored on its first four possessions, including a 71-yard touchdown pass from Dalton Sturm to Kerry Thomas Jr. and a 4-yard run by Rhodes. The Roadrunners led 28-7 after one quarter.

Southern Miss ran nearly twice as many plays as UTSA, 89-47, but only outgained UTSA by 25 yards. UTSA had four plays of 70 yards or more in the game, two of which went for touchdowns. There was also a 92-yard run that set up its final touchdown.

“Yeah, I was a little shocked by that,” UTSA coach Frank Wilson laughed when asked about the Roadrunners’ fast start. “You know, you look at the cumulative at the back end of the game, we had less than 50 plays and I think they may have had 80. So we didn’t have a lot of plays, but we’re very fortunate that we had big plays.”

Rhodes added an 80-yard touchdown run in the second quarter, and Matt Guidry had a 20-yard scoring run in the third. Jarveon Williams had a pair of short first-quarter touchdown runs and finished with 122 yards.

Sturm was just 10-of-12 passing for 193 yards and one touchdown.

Southern Miss (4-2, 2-1) was led by Nick Mullens, who went 24-of-47 for 370 yards with three touchdowns while playing catch-up all day. Ito Smith gained 94 yards on 20 carries with a 1-yard TD run. D.J. Thompson caught seven passes for 89 yards and a touchdown, and Allenzae Staggers had six receptions for 92 yards.

Southern Miss trailed by 24 points midway through the fourth quarter, but made things interesting — at least for a few minutes — with a late surge.

Mullens threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to Chase Whitehead with 6:47 left and a 2-point conversion was good to make it 48-32. The Golden Eagles then forced a punt and got the ball back in good field position following a 31-yard return by D’Nerius Antoine.

Two passes moved USM to the 9-yard line, but Mullens threw an interception on the next play. UTSA’s Williams broke off a 92-yard run on third-and-13 on the ensuing drive, and Rhodes scored on a 3-yard run to give the Roadrunners a 55-32 lead with 1:57 remaining.

“We kept fighting. We knocked it down to a two-score game and we were driving to make it a one-score game. We were down at one point by 24 points and toward the end of the game it’s about to be a ballgame again,” Southern Miss coach Jay Hopson said. “That’s one thing I’ve always loved about this football team. They never quit. They keep digging. We were about to give ourselves a chance. All we needed to do was get an onside kick and have a chance to carry the game into overtime, but we had that interception and that’s just the way this game rolls.”

Southern Miss lost for the first time in Conference USA play and had its two-game winning streak snapped. The Golden Eagles will go out of conference next week to play at LSU.

“It’s frustrating. We didn’t expect to lose. I mean, we never expect to lose,” Thompson said. “I felt like offensively the one thing we could have changed…and I mean we left a few plays out there…more than anything I wish we could have gotten on them early like they got on us early so we could have at least stayed closer. I felt like we fought and clawed though, so I can’t be mad at us. I’m proud of my team and I feel like we still played our butts off.”