South Florida defensive back J.R. Reed has a new-found respect for tailback Thomas Hammock after NIU’s 20-17 victory Thursday night.

“He’s a great player,” Reed said. “He was really hard to take down.”

The tailback started off the season with a career-high 177 yard, 34 attempt game and one touchdown, giving Hammock his seventh 100-yard performance for his career. Hammock also moved into 19th place on the NIU career rushing total mark with 1,241 yards.

When offensive lineman Tim Vincent found out Hammock rushed for 177 yards against South Florida, he stood in amazement and praised the tailback’s performance.

“He’s a tough runner,” Vincent said. “We (the offensive line) take a lot of pride blocking for a running back like him.”

It was the play of the junior tailback that kept the Huskies in the game late in the third quarter Thursday. Out of the 38 offensive plays, Hammock’s name was called 21 times, running for 94 yards.

Quarterback Chris Finlen said toward the end of the game, he noticed the Bulls’ defense tiring out, so he tried to get the plays off as quickly as he could, calling Hammock to bull-doze through the battered South Florida offense.

Finlen noticed the referees were spotting the ball quicker in between plays to pick up the game and decided to use that to the Huskies’ advantage.

The tailback said that the hurried-up offense tired him out as well but knew if the Huskies were going to pull out the game, he was going to feed off the energy of his starting quarterback.

“To be honest with you, I was cramping up a little bit at the end of the game,” the junior said. “But then I looked down at the offensive line and I know they were giving it their hardest, and I didn’t want to let the team down or the offensive line. I just kept looking at them and I said to myself, ‘I gotta go. I gotta go.’ Then Finlen kept saying let’s get to the line and let’s go, so I really didn’t have time to get tired, so I decided to keep running and it turned out for the best.”