The New Mexico State football team stay winless as a multitude of offensive mistakes continues to derail the Aggies, who fell to Fresno State 30-17 Saturday night at Aggie Memorial Stadium.

Another bad start — consisting of a quick three-and-out on NM State’s opening drive and a  long Fresno State drive that resulted in a the game’s opening touchdown — put the Aggies in a hole early.

The Aggies would continue to struggle moving the ball well into the first half, and when they did manage to string a drive together just before the halftime break, Fresno State would cut it off a 79-yard interception return for a touchdown to give them a 24-3 lead.

“Fresno is really well coached, they have really good players, particularly on defense. Now all our problems are self inflicted,” head coach Doug Martin said. We’ve got to get some consistency as a whole team, we just had way too many turnovers to be a winning football team.”

Defense, on the other hand, looks to have progressed since a near non-existent performance in last week’s loss to UNM.

A bundle of great defensive stops by the Aggie defense set the team up with a number of scoring opportunities and limited Fresno State to 386 yards of total offense — 79 of which came on one play.

“They are a very solid unit. Great field study, knew their tendencies, and knew what they wanted to do,” Defensive end Cedric Wilcots II said. “We’re coming out there and just trying to adjust to that, and we found some success, but it still wasn’t enough.”

The Aggies came out swinging in the second, set up by a Fresno fumble, forced by Devin Richardson and recovered by Matt Young, deep in their own territory on the second play of the drive, setting the the offense up for their first touchdown of the day — a two-yard run by Jason Huntley.

Like it has all season though, that momentum was stymied by a turnover, more specifically a Josh Adkins interception, giving Fresno State a short field to work with. Adkins and the offense struggled to stretch the ball down field, largely because of the quality of Fresno State’s back seven.

“We were just trying to get the ball to our skilled guys, we just couldn’t block them on the perimeter,” Martin said. “They did a great job defensively of just reading plays.”

NM State’s defense would hold Fresno State to two field goals in the second half, giving Adkins and the offense opportunities to mount a comeback, and it looked possible after the second year signal caller found Tony Nicholson for his first score of the day to cut the game to 30-17 with over nine minutes to play.

Adkins would get picked off a third time on the Aggies’ next offensive drive, ending whatever hopes the team had to pick up their first win of the season.

“The disappointing thing with him [Adkins] so far is I haven’t seen the big jump you’d like to see from his freshman year to his sophomore year, he throws way too many interceptions right now…,” Martin said about his man under center. “He’ll work at it because thats just the type of kid he is.”

This game will served as a chip-on-the-shoulder heading into next week, where the Aggies will host Liberty in their homecoming matchup.