FIU came into Saturday night's Sun Belt Conference football game against Arkansas State with high hopes for its first victory of the season after four close losses. But the Indians had other plans.

It started off bad for the Golden Panthers as on their first play from scrimmage, Josh Padrick's pass was picked off by Tyrell Johnson, leading to an early touchdown in Arkansas State's easy 31-6 victory at FIU Stadium.

Redshirt freshman Reggie Arnold led the ASU offense with 142 yards rushing on 23 carries and quarterback Travis Hewitt, while only completing 6-of-17 passes, ran for two touchdowns as the Indians evened their record at 2-2 on the season and 1-0 in SBC play.

Once again, the FIU offense just couldn't get on track. The Golden Panthers' leading rusher A'mod Ned picked up 38 yards on 12 carries, but that was negated by three sacks of Padrick, resulting in nine net rushing yards?the second lowest total all time in the history of the program (FIU had seven net rushing yards on Oct. 12, 2002 at Western Kentucky).

Padrick, meanwhile, finished with 18 completed passes for 177 yards but threw three interceptions and no touchdowns to go along with a costly fumble.

“Games are won in the trenches and they won the trench game and congratulations to them,” said a disappointed FIU head coach Don Strock. “We've got a long way to go [in the season], but we have a lot of improving to do. We'll come back to work on Monday just like we do every week and work to improve. And believe me, we have a lot of improving to do in some areas.”

It took only eight plays for ASU to go 31 yards for its first score after the Johnson interception. Later in the quarter, FIU (0-5, 0-2) moved the ball down to the ASU 19-yard line but a 39-yard field goal attempt was missed by Dustin Rivest and the scored stayed at 7-0.

ASU made it 14-0 midway through the second quarter with back-up QB Cory Leonard at the controls. Leonard completed four passes on the drive for 40 yards and then called his own number for the final seven yards and a touchdown.

The Indians made it 21-0, working with a short field after Padrick was sacked and fumbled the ball at the FIU 19. Arnold runs of nine and three yards gave ASU a first-and-goal at the seven-yard line. On the next play, Hewitt was hit by Jeremiah Weatherspoon and fumbled the ball. The Golden Panthers believe they had come away with the fumble, but the referees ruled that they had after the ball went out of bounds and the drive continued.

Hewitt made good on his second attempt, however, going the final seven yards for the score.

FIU finally got on the scoreboard later in the quarter when Padrick engineered a nine-play, 84-yard drive, which included a 25-yard completion to tight end Samuel Smith and a five-yard TD run by Ned. But Rivest's PAT attempt was blocked, adding more frustration to the Golden Panthers' evening.

The fourth quarter was all ASU. The Indians scored their final 10 points of the night on a 19-yard field goal by Josh Arauco and Hewitt's second TD of the night from two yards out. Arkansas State had the ball for 10:22 of the stanza and overall, had more than 10 minutes of possession than FIU (35:57 to 24:03).

“Our quarterback didn't play well and we didn't make catches when we needed to,” Strock said. “We had our opportunities, but it didn't happen. After playing pretty well for the first four weeks and having opportunities to win in the fourth quarter, we didn't have an opportunity form the first play of the game, tonight. It started there and ended with the last play.”

The Golden Panthers must wait until next week for their first Sun Belt victory. The team travels to North Texas next Saturday night. In fact, FIU plays its next three games on the road and doesn't return home until Nov. 11.