The Temple Wildcats seemingly could do no wrong for the first 1½ quarters of Friday night’s season opener at Wildcat Stadium.

Alternating series at quarterback, senior Kade Stewart and junior Champ Mayo fired two touchdown passes each, and O’Ryan Peoples added a 2-yard TD run as Temple raced out to a 35-0 lead midway through the second period against Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, its opponent from Monterrey, Mexico.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats’ new-look defense didn’t allow the Tigres to have much success.

However, resurgent Nuevo Leon then made things interesting by scoring the game’s next 26 points as Temple cooled off and made critical mistakes in all three phases, slicing the Wildcats’ advantage to 35-26 late in the third quarter.

Temple recovered when it needed to, getting Mayo’s 13-yard touchdown pass to senior Christian Tutson with 6 minutes remaining en route to earning a 42-26 victory.