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Bailey Zappe has 61st touchdown pass of the season.
Bailey Zappe broke the record for touchdown passes in a season when he found Mitchell Tinsley for his 61st touchdown pass of the year. (0:22)
3:06 PM
Western Kentucky's Bailey Zappe threw for 422 yards and six touchdown and the Colonels beat Appalachian State 59-38 in the Boca Raton Bowl on Saturday.
Zappe had 5,977 yards and 62 touchdown for the Hilltoppers. He broke the previous record of 5,833 yards set by Texas Tech's B.J. Symons in 2003 and the previous record of 60 touchdown passes set by LSU's Joe Burrow.
Western Kentucky's Jerreth Sterns had a season in which he caught 150 passes for 1,902 yards. Tinsley had two touchdown catches, and Whittington had a third-quarter touchdown run.
Chase Brice left the game with a leg injury in the fourth quarter. It was the first loss in seven all-time bowl games.
It was 24-24 late in the first half when Zappe, who had completed 33 of 47 passes, put his name in the record book.
He broke the yardage mark on a 43-yard pass to Sterns, who finished the season with the fifth-most receiving yards in FBS history, and then tied the touchdown mark on the same drive. The run became a 35-7 one.
Western Kentucky's lead was three points when Zappe threw his record-setting touchdown pass to Tinsley on the second drive of the third quarter.
The way forward.
The 97 combined points were a Boca Raton Bowl record, topping the 81 that Western Kentucky and Memphis combined for in the 2016 game. The 59 points by Western Kentucky were a new record, beating the previous mark of 52 set by Marshall in the same year and matching the record set by Florida Atlantic in 2019.
There are polls in POLL IMPLICATIONS.
Even though the AP Top 25 poll had the Mountaineers receiving votes, they were not in the final poll.
