By Jim Fenton, The Enterprise (Brockton)

BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- The Bridgewater State University football team did its part to make homecoming weekend a festive time on campus.

After losing three straight games, the Bears broke out in style on Saturday afternoon with a dominant performance against Plymouth State University.

The offense, using two quarterbacks and increasing the roles of other players, gained 455 yards while the defense recorded the program's first shutout since Oct. 29, 2011.

It all added up to a 24-0 victory over the Panthers before a crowd of 1,880 at Swenson Field, where BSU had been 0-3 this season.

"Right now, it's nice to kind of stop the bleeding,'' said Bears coach Chuck Denune, whose team is 3-4 and 2-3 in the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference. "It was a tough little run there. It feels a lot better to win.

"Hopefully, that propels us to move forward and play better. We've got three games left and we need to play better than we did today and there's no reason why we can't."

BSU welcomed back its two top receivers in Matt Green of Stoughton (sidelined the past two games) and freshman Travis Bassett (who missed one game), and they provided an instant boost to the offense.

Green caught nine passes for 78 yards while Bassett had five receptions for 56 yards, helping a team that scored only 10 points in each of the past two games.

The Bears also used quarterbacks Danny Higgins (16-for-21, 167 yards) and freshman Malik Garrett (6-for-9, 38 yards and eight carries for 61 yards and a touchdown).

"Both of them are very good quarterbacks, but they give you very different games," said Denune, who increased Garrett's role. "I don't want a guy sitting on the sideline that can do things for us. The coaches feel confident in their ability to game prep for both guys. It's going to cause defenses problems."

Freshman Alex McLaughlin had his best game, rushing for 103 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries against Plymouth State, which had not lost a road game to BSU since 1979.

"We played better, obviously," said Denune. "We did change quite a bit up. We made a point to get a couple of more people very involved in the game, get their hands on the ball. These freshmen aren't freshmen at this point.

"It seems like Malik and McLauglin and Bassett are going to have to stand up and make plays. We wanted to get them a lot of experience because we're going to need them the rest of the way and we're going to ask a lot out of our younger guys to step up and play and make plays for us."

Sophomore Cristian Rivera got BSU going with a 5-yard touchdown run with 3:52 left in the first quarter to end a 10-play, 64-yard drive and make it 7-0.

Coli Neri then kicked a 44-yard field goal – 5 yards shy of the school record – with 12:59 remaining in the half for a 10-0 lead and Garrett made it 17-0 with a 27-yard run around the left just 2:37 later.

McLaughlin finished the scoring with 3:16 to go in the third quarter, going in from 15 yards out to cap a 12-play, 80-yard drive.

The BSU defense gave up very little as the Panthers (1-5, 0-4) were limited to 121 yards of total offense, including just 37 on the ground. Tate Doehler had eight tackles, including three for a loss of 18 yards, while Adam Toman made seven tackles with a sack and Marty Voorhis had three tackles for a loss of 15 yards.

"The defense played well and they played hard," said Denune. "We did a lot of good things."