SMU defensive end Margus Hunt capped off his college career by claiming MVP honors in the 43-10 rout of Fresno State in the Hawaii Bowl (photo by SMU athletics).

It often is said that “timing is everything.” If that is correct, then SMU defensive end Margus Hunt picked a good time to have what virtually all observers considered the finest game of his college career.

A career that started as one enormous question mark for the 6-foot-8-inch former track star culminated with a dominant performance in the Mustangs’ 43-10 demolition of the Fresno State Bulldogs in the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl. Hunt almost single-handedly destroyed the Fresno State offensive line, collecting three tackles (all of which were tackles for loss) and two sacks (one of which was so forceful that Bulldog quarterback Derek Carr’s head — or at least his helmet — almost came off), forcing a pair of fumbles and registering his first career safety en route to picking up Most Valuable Player honors — an impressive day’s work for a guy who has played just four seasons of football in his life.

“I don’t know,” Hunt said when asked if he agreed with the assessment that his performance in Hawaii was the best of his young football career. “Our defense played great in the first half — there’s no doubt about that. In the second half, (the Bulldogs) had some different play-calling. Best game of my career? I don’t know. That’s not for me to say. The fumbles and the safety really helped the team get going, I know that.”

There are times that Hunt still appears raw, like a guy still learning the sport. But for someone with a rare combination of size, power and speed, that’s the closest Hunt will come to bragging about his talents. Instead, he characteristically talked up the abilities of his opponents.

“Their quarterback (Carr) made some marvelous throws, and their receivers made some great catches, and they had a lot of fight in them,” Hunt said. “We also knew they have a really good running back (Fresno State senior Robbie Rouse is his school’s all-time rushing leader with 4,657 yards in his career), so we focused on keeping him under 150 yards. We knew they focus on (Rouse), that he was going to be a big threat to our defense, and we had to keep him limited.”

Carr did make some impressive throws, completing 33 of 54 passes for 362 yards and a touchdown, but he was harassed all day and threw a pair of interceptions. The Bulldogs’ receivers did make some impressive catches, most notably freshman Davante Adams, who led the offense with 13 catches for 144 yards and a touchdown. And Rouse is an exceptionally talented runner, but “keep him limited”? Hunt and the SMU defense bottled up Rouse and the running game, holding Rouse to just 22 rushing yards and the FSU offense to minus-16 rushing yards (Carr had minus-41 rushing yards, thanks to seven SMU sacks). Because of their inability to get the ground game going, the Bulldogs were forced to take to the air in an attempt to close the gap on the scoreboard.

Hunt made freshman offense tackle Alex Fifita in to little more than a 6-foot-4-inch, 290-pound human turnstile, racing around, over and through him to spend the game clobbering Carr or forcing him in to errant throws, two of which were intercepted and returned for touchdowns by linebacker Taylor Reed and safety Hayden Greenbauer. Hunt said the extra time before between the Mustangs’ victory over Tulsa in the regular-season finale and the Hawaii Bowl, including the eight-hour flight from Dallas to Honolulu, allowed to him to put in extra preparation for his final college opponent that paid off handsomely against the Bulldogs.

“During the weeks (leading up to the game), we watched ‘cut-ups’ and studied their personnel groupings, but during the film (sessions), we watched how the games went for them,” he said. “We had five game films, and we saw that in the games they lost, teams played really physical at the line of scrimmage. When we saw that, we knew from there on out that we had to be physical.

“(Tackle’s name) … I saw him sitting back on his feet a little bit. It was not easy to run by him, because he’s big and really strong, but I thought that if I had good ‘get-off,’ I should be able to get back there. I was right.”

Hunt said that he and his teammates also received a little extra motivation to perform at a high level — motivation that came from the Fresno State community.

“Our team was really focused,” Hunt said. “When we got our scouting report, the first page of the scouting report had quotes from some Fresno State alumni, saying how they were disappointed they were playing SMU, with a lot of ‘downtalk’ about SMU. They said they were disappointed for everyone out there, and we made it a point to show that we’re not some pushover team.”

Hunt acknowledged that the Mustangs didn’t win every game they could have in 2012, admitting that imperfection is part of football, as it is with any sport. But he said the victory in the Hawaii Bowl, however, was a better indication of what the SMU team really was this season.

“(Losing winnable games) is part of college football,” he said. “It happens. That’s why they say ‘anything can happen on any given Saturday.’ If one team makes a couple of mistakes here and there and the other team plays well, the other team has a chance to win games. That doesn’t mean that’s a better team — it’s just part of competition. We had a couple of tough losses, but we never quit and our coaches never quit pushing us and preparing us. Whether we won or lost, we expected to get to end our season in a bowl game, and even after a tough loss, we were able to come back with a strong game, like we did against Houston.

“It’s the same thing that happened four years ago, and we lost a couple of games we could have won, but we ended up beating Nevada in the Hawaii Bowl. It happens. You can’t focus on a game you lost. What’s important is how you respond.”

Hunt leaves the Mustangs after a season in which he led his team in sacks with eight and blocked kicks with three, while collecting 31 tackles. He set the NCAA record for blocked field goals with 10, and added seven blocked extra points to close his career with 17 blocked kicks — two shy of the all-time NCAA record.

Now, after taking a few days off, Hunt begins preparation for the next chapter in his athletic career: the National Football League. He’ll head (along with several of the nation’s best players, including SMU running back Zach Line, with whom Hunt expects to share a room at the IMG Academy) to Bradenton, Fla., where he will train for eight weeks for the NFL Combine, which will be held in Indianapolis at the end of February. He’ll interrupt his training for a week in late January to play in the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala.

The tools are obvious even to the most casual observer. Hunt carries 277 pounds on his frame and combines the power of the largest players with speed and explosiveness seen normally in players 100 pounds smaller. At the beginning of the 2012 season, cbssports.com called Hunt the “biggest (athletic) freak” in college football. But despite his physique and age (25), Hunt now has an opportunity to show his football ability matches his gifts.

“I’ll train hard (at IMG),” Hunt said. “But most importantly, I’ll have a personal coach when it comes to the pass rush and other football-specific things. It’s not just the training — it’s everything else around you: the support staff, the massage therapy for recovery, the nutritionists.”

Individual training and teaching is nothing new to Hunt, who came to SMU in the first place to train with SMU track coach Dave Wollman. Once he joined the football team, he learned the techniques and nuances of the sport from defensive line coach Bert Hill and defensive coordinator Tom Mason, but continued his strength and conditioning training with Wollman. Even as a freshman, the tools jumped out at anyone watching his first practices. In one early drill in his freshman year, offensive linemen J.T. Brooks and Kelly Turner double-teamed their new teammate. Hunt drove Turner and Brooks — each of whom was in the neighborhood of 300 pounds — straight back. He drove them in the wrong direction, nowhere near the quarterback, but the power he possessed even then was jaw-dropping.

Hunt said he doesn’t want to make significant changes to his physique, but said he hopes to make significant improvements in his measurable tests before the Combine.

“I want to get faster, get a quicker burst, get stronger, work on my pass rush,” he said. “I’m not going to Florida for a vacation.”

NFL scouts have been present at SMU practices all season, with Hunt drawing more scrutiny than any other 2012 senior. There are limitations on what scouts are allowed to discuss with players — one scout was overheard saying his team “would like to see (Hunt) at about 300 pounds” — so Hunt is not exactly sure what specific teams think of him. But he said he feels comfortable with his development as a player and his current size.

“I don’t want to get any bigger, really — maybe a few pounds, but not any more than that,” he said, “because I’m playing really well at this weight (277 pounds).”

Margus Hunt boasts a rare combination of size, speed and strength that has many projecting him as a first- or second-round pick in the upcoming NFL Draft (photo by PonyFans.com).

One of the strongest players in SMU history, he also has backed off the idea of going after a record number of repetitions in the NFL-standard 225-pound bench press at the Combine. (The all-time record is 51 reps, set in 1999 by Justin Ernest of Eastern Kentucky … who lasted all of one season in the NFL as a member of the New Orleans Saints.)

“It would be really tough to get that record,” said Hunt, who in the past has been able to do more than 40 reps. “Right now, I could do something in the high 30s, maybe a little over 40, but I haven’t been training for that. That record would be nice, but that’s not the goal (at the Combine). The goal is to show teams you have what it takes to be a good player.”

One final key to his performance in Hawaii was a return to good health. Hunt missed the Stephen F. Austin game and most of two others at the start of the season with a back injury that was so painful he could barely stand up. He missed the end of the victory over Tulsa game because of a sprained ankle. Neither injury affects him now, he said.

“My back is healthy — I feel good when playing — and my ankle felt a lot better than it did after the Tulsa game,” he said. “That (ankle) needed to get better, or I wouldn’t have been able to get off the ball like I did (against Fresno State). It doesn’t get talked about as much (as the strength and speed tests), but that (being fully healthy) is really important for the Combine.”

Hunt, who graduated in May with a degree in sport management, has a chance to be drafted higher than any player since wide receiver Ron Morris, who was taken in the second round of the 1987 NFL Draft by the Chicago Bears, or perhaps even cornerback Rod Jones and running back Reggie Dupard, who went 25th and 26th, respectively, in the first round of the 1986 draft. During the Hawaii Bowl, the television announcers watched Hunt wreak havoc on the helpless Fresno State offense and declared that Hunt was “making himself a lot of money” in the nationally televised game. If he is able to parlay his training at IMG in to a standout performance at the Combine, he has an excellent chance to prove them right.