ORLANDO, Fla.  — John Rhys Plumlee accounted for seven touchdowns to match a program record and led UCF to a 70-13 rout of Temple on Thursday night.

Plumlee threw for 373 yards and four touchdowns and added another 37 yards on the ground with three scores. All three short-yardage touchdown runs and a 25-yard TD pass to Kobe Hudson came in the first half as UCF (5-1, 2-0 American Athletic Conference) jumped out to a 35-13 halftime lead.

"I'm real pleased with our team," said UCF head coach Gus Malzahn. "I think we played our best football game tonight. Early on they moved the football, but our defense held them to field goals. Offensively, I thought we had some good rhythm early and had some good drives. Probably the key drive of the whole game was right before halftime. We were able to punch that in and give it some breathing room.

"Our defense played really well in the second half, I think they gave up around 90 yards and held another opponent under 20 points. I think that's the ninth in a row or something like that."

Plumlee hit Ryan O’Keefe with touchdown passes that included a 68-yarder on consecutive drives early in the third quarter. Plumlee added a 64-yard TD pass to Hudson that stretched the Knights’ lead to 56-13 about midway through the third.

"Our quarterback, he played extremely well," Malzahn said. "Not very many times I think, I've had an offense that had 400 yards passing and 300 yards rushing so I'm real proud. That team [Temple] had a real defense coming in, you know they were top 10 statistically in a lot of different categories, so I'm real pleased with our team."

Hudson finished with four catches for 121 yards receiving and O’Keefe had seven for 111.

Freshman Thomas Castellanos took over for Plumlee late in the third quarter. He finished the game with a career-best 88 rushing yards to lead all players in the game in addition to completing all six of his passes for 60 yards and scoring on a touchdown run.

UCF put up 737 yards of offense while holding Temple (2-4, 0-2) to 293. It was the Knights’ sixth consecutive win against the Owls and the third game this season surpassing 600 yards of offense. It was also the Knights' most yards of offense since gaining 798 against Memphis on Oct. 17, 2020.

Linebacker Jason Johnson led the UCF defense with nine tackles, including five solo stops with a tackle for loss and a quarterback hurry. 

Kicker Colton Boomer went 10-for-10 on point-after attempts, tying UCF's program record set by Matthew Wright in 2017.

The Knights honored their ties to the Kennedy Space Center, where roughly a third of its employees are UCF alumni, by rebranding as The Space U Citronauts for the game. They wore space-themed, all-black uniforms displaying a Canaveral blue “Space U” wordmark on the front of their jerseys. The Knights are 7-0 in spaced-themed games. Even the marching band got ino the spirit, as the drum majors replaced their usual swords with light sabers.

E.J. Warner completed 24 of 43 passes for 234 yards and a touchdown pass for Temple.

UCF will return to action next weekend when the Knights travel to East Carolina for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff on Oct. 22.