EVANSTON - It was a day of firsts for Northwestern football. Northwestern won their first game this season, the first for interim head coach David Braun as a head coach.

Quarterback Ben Bryant threw and ran for his first touchdowns as a Wildcat, linebackers Xander Mueller and Bryce Gallagher came down with the defense's first two turnovers and defensive end Anto Saka its first sack.

All those firsts added up to a 38-7 win over UTEP that was a long time coming. The victory snapped the Wildcats’ 12-game losing streak that went back to August of 2022, as well as an eight-game slide at Ryan Field that dated to October of 2021.

But the first half had all the signs of Northwestern's last 12 games and there were restless murmurs across the stadium as the Wildcats went into half tied at seven with a Conference USA opponent.

Northwestern had answered UTEP's first scoring drive with one of their own, capped by sophomore quarterback Jack Lausch's touchdown from six yards out, but had been held scoreless since.

Then the second half kicked off and the Wildcats came out like gangbusters, scoring on all five of their drives. Much-maligned offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian trusted the ground game and ran nine times in 13 plays on a 79-yard touchdown drive to open the half.

"Complementary football," Braun said on what clicked in Northwestern's 31-point second half. "It's not flashy, it's not instant gratification. It takes time.

"All of a sudden our offense starts to get some rhythm and they're running the football. We get a couple takeaways, a couple stops and it's a domino effect. It snowballs."

Mueller picked up the defense's second interception on the next drive and rumbled the return back to the UTEP 3. Three runs later, two of them keepers by Bryant, and Northwestern punched in their third touchdown to take a 21-7 lead with a little more than six minutes left in the quarter.

Bryant went off with an upper-body injury after the scoring sneak and was labeled questionable to return. Braun said his injury will be evaluated tomorrow.

In a welcome sight to their points-starved fans, the Wildcats kept the pressure on through adversity. Senior quarterback Ryan Hilinski dumped off a screen to sophomore running back Joseph Himon II, who took it 85 yards for a touchdown to push Northwestern's lead to three scores and give the coaching staff no need to put Bryant back in harm's way.

The final touchdown came from speedster AJ Henning, set up by a 46-yard rush from Lausch earlier in the drive, and kicker Jack Olsen closed it out with a 40-yard field goal to extend the lead to its final form of 38-7.

This could be just a flash in the pan before the strength of schedule picks up considerably, but it still should be a victory that Braun and this team relishes.

After a Week 1 debacle at Rutgers, they went into this game as 1.5-point underdogs. Several pundits and writers picked them to lose today, and talk of the Wildcats going 1-11 or even 0-12 were not hard to find.

And then the second half kicked in and for the first time in two years, Northwestern football dominated a football game.

"It's no secret that last Sunday was a tough day," Braun said. "We really challenged the group to immediately flush it even before we left New Jersey."

The defense forced turnovers and controlled the point of attack. The offense lit up the scoreboard for the second-most points scored in Bajakian's four seasons as offensive coordinator. Three different quarterbacks and three different receivers scored. If the Wildcats saw an opportunity, they capitalized.

Northwestern will face a stiff test next week on the road at No. 21 Duke, who beat Clemson last week and is handling Lafayette as this publishes. But they'll do so with a weight off their shoulders, and with their home and overall losing streaks excised.

No matter how it goes in Durham, N.C., Braun accomplished what last Sunday seemed a Herculean task; he reset the program. He had plenty of options at his disposal as he took the podium with reporters and athletic director Derrick Gragg in the audience.

He could have been vindictive, calling out doubters or non-believers, speaking to the challenges the team faced in the aftermath of head coach Pat Fitzgerald's sudden firing in July. On the heels of a 31-point win, he could have looked back.

Instead, he chose the path that he has tread since he was the program's sole public speaker at Big Ten Media Days: to steward the program forward.

"We don't know what the long-term looks like, that's indicative of the [interim] title I'm carrying right now," Braun said. "At the end of the day, regardless of how this plays out, my wife and I, this group, we're going to look back and say we're proud of the way we did that.

"We stewarded the program. We navigated it through a really difficult time and set it up to have success moving forward."