Buffalo beats No. 23 Northern Illinois 23-20 on Bellenfant's field goal in OT

DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — Upton Bellenfant kicked a 37-yard field goal in overtime to give Buffalo a 23-20 victory over No. 23 Northern Illinois on Saturday.

The Huskies (2-1, 0-1 Mid-American Conference), playing for the first time since winning at then-No. 5 Notre Dame two weeks ago, managed just six points in the second half. Buffalo (3-1, 1-0), which began playing at the FBS level in 1999, beat a ranked opponent for the second time in its history.

“To me, it was just another kick,” said Bellenfant, who became Buffalo's starting kicker just last week. “Kind of a magic story out there. Everything went right.

“It really gives us hope we can go undefeated the rest of the season.”

The Bulls led 20-17 after linebacker Shaun Dolac’s interception and 53-yard return set up a field goal, but the Huskies tied it with a 13-play drive that ended with Kanon Woodill’s 27-yard field goal with 26 seconds to play.

“As a defense, we buckled it down but we know we can count on the offense when it counts,” Dolac said. “They scored, they tied the game up and the rest is history.”

Woodill, who booted the game-winner at Notre Dame, missed a pair of field goal tries, including a 42-yarder that was blocked in overtime. That set up the winning kick from Bellenfant, who was 3 for 3 on the day.

“We were prepared to play but didn’t make the plays necessary to put ourselves in a position to win,” said Huskies coach Thomas Hammock, whose team also lost a fumble. “The only way we can lose the game is if we turn the ball over, and that’s what we did.”

Buffalo’s Pete Lembo, a head coach again after nine years as an assistant at four schools, said his players deserved all the credit.

“For them to be rewarded with a signature win like this, this early in our tenure is a big deal,” Lambo said.

C.J. Ogbonna was 10 for 17 for 107 yards and a touchdown for the Bulls. His 46-yard scoring toss to Victor Snow early in the third quarter got Buffalo within 14-10. Al-Jay Henderson’s 36-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter tied it at 17.

Antario Brown rushed for 73 yards and a pair of touchdowns for the Huskies.

He scored on a short run near the end of the first quarter and again on a 14-yard scamper late in the second that gave the Huskies a 14-3 halftime lead.

Ethan Hampton went 23 of 43 for 194 yards and an interception for Northern Illinois.

Buffalo’s only other victory against a ranked opponent came in the 2008 MAC championship game, when it beat No. 14 Ball State.

Buffalo: The Bulls looked lost offensively in the first half after averaging just 1.1 yards per carry but regrouped and kept the Huskies out of the end zone the rest of the way.

Northern Illinois: The defensive line that gave Notre Dame fits didn’t disappoint. The Huskies’ offense still needs some work, however, if they hope to match fellow MAC contender Toledo, which scored 41 points at Mississippi State last weekend.

The Huskies probably will fall out of the AP Top 25, but get another chance to show they belong when they visit N.C. State next weekend.

Buffalo: At Connecticut next Saturday.

Northern Illinois: At N.C. State next Saturday.

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Buffalo place kicker Upton Bellenfant falls over a Northern Illinois defender after kicking the game winning field goal off the hold of Ethan Duane, during the team's 23-20 upset overtime win in an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Buffalo quarterback C.J. Ogbonna throes as running back Jacqez Barksdale defends against Northern Illinois linebacker Jaden Dolphin during the first half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Northern Illinois running back Antario Brown (1) celebrates his his second touchdown of the day with quarterback Ethan Hampton during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Buffalo on Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Buffalo running back Al-Jay Henderson breaks the tackle of Northern Illinois safety Jordan Hansen and heads to the end zone for a touchdown during the second half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Buffalo place kicker Upton Bellenfant, left, begins to celebrate his game winning field goal in overtime with holder Ethan Duane, during the team's 23-20 upset win in an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Northern Illinois wide receiver Trayvon Rudolph just misses catching a deep pass from quarterback Ethan Hampton during the first half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Buffalo cornerback Marquis Cooper breaks up a pass intended for Northern Illinois wide receiver Cam Thompson in the end zone, during the second half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The Buffalo defense blocks an overtime field goal attempt by Northern Illinois place kicker Kanon Woodill in an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Buffalo place kicker Upton Bellenfant kicks the game winning field goal off the hold of Ethan Duane, during the team's 23-20 upset overtime win in an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in DeKalb, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)