Something happened at halftime.

Something big in the Arkansas State Red Wolves 48-21 victory over Southeast Missouri Saturday night at Centennial Bank Stadium.

Or maybe the Arkansas State Red Wolves were not quite ready to leave 2017 behind.

In a first half that looked eerie similar to the frustrating season of a year ago, Arkansas State took a 21-14 lead into the locker room and left a lot of frustration among the crowd of 20,184.

In that first half, A-State had just 112 yards rushing, a red zone turnover, 4 personal foul penalties, dropped passes and everything that seemed to go wrong last season.

“We kept shooting ourselves in the foot,’’ said linebacker Tajhea Chambers.

Blake Anderson said “ It was even good to get (Logan) Bonner out there and take some snaps when the game was still kind of in question and the same thing for Marcell Murray, but all of that is kinda clouded by the fact that we had 12 penalties for 119 yards and we turned the ball over a couple of times and we missed a couple of tackles that turned into big plays for them.”

Then the third quarter happened.

“It was nothing dramatic, just a reality check at halftime that we were not playing real well and we were letting them hang around and stay in the game,’’ said Anderson. “I thought the offense came out and responded well really well and we started clicking. We dropped a bunch of opportunities in the first half. It was really just a comedy of errors and we stayed away from those in the third quarter and kind of stretched things out and they responded to a bad half the right way by coming out in the third quarter and playing the way we needed to play like a mature team.”

A-State put up 27 points in the period, three Justice Hansen TD passes and one by Logan Bonner, to take control of the game. SEMO gained just 51 yards in the quarter, most of that coming on one possession.

A-State cleaned up everything in that quarter, including just one penalty for 9 yards.

Other than that it was a big night for Justice Hansen, who set a school record with six touchdown passes. Hansen finished 26 of 36 for 423 yards.

Jonathan Adams started the scoring with a 26-yard pass reception where he fought the defensive back the final 10 yards to score. Justin McInnis caught a 15-yard scoring pass from Hansen for the second score. But each time the Red Wolves scored, SEMO would answer. It was 14-14 with 8:02 left in the half.

A 36-yard pass to Kendrick Edwards gave A-State a 21-14 lead at the half.

Javonis Isaac (57 yards), Bubba Ogbedor (6), Marcell Murray (67 yards) caught scoring passes from Hansen. Omar Bayless caught a 54-yard scoring pass from Logan Bonner.

A-State finished with 685 yards offense, the third best in school history, with SEMO producing 285. ASU ran 20 more plays. The Red Wolves did have three turnovers (SEMO none) and finished with 119 yards on 12 penalties.