TAMPA, Fla. — For the second week in a row, the Bowling Green football team learned that all good things come to an end sooner or later, as the University of South Florida dominated Saturday night’s game and came away with a 29-7 victory.
“It’s been a couple of tough weeks, but in this game there is a winner and a loser,” said quarterback Josh Harris. “You’re going to lose a game sometime. I don’t think there is a confidence problem on this team.”
“We knew exactly what we were getting into,” said head coach Urban Meyer. “I don’t think anyone was shocked at the speed and at the level of talent our opponents had.”
However, at the start of the game, it looked like the Falcons were going to take a vengeance after last weekend’s loss to Northern Illinois University as the Bulls were unable to get any offense going.
On the first USF drive, the Bulls were forced to punt. BG receiver Cornelius McGrady was there to block it, and Mike Crumpler recovered the ball for the Falcons on USF’s 18-yard line.
Four plays and 1:29 later, Harris found the end zone on an eight-yard run up the middle to give the Falcons an early 7-0 lead.
The Bulls got the ball back on their own 14-yard line and drove 86 yards in 3:09 to tie the game at 7-7 on a 42-yard touchdown pass from Marquel Blackwell to Chris Iskra. The Falcons’ offense came back out onto the field and entered Bulls territory, but Harris’ pass to Robert Redd on second down and one yard to go was intercepted by USF’s J.R. Reed.
“[I was] extremely disappointed in our offense,” Meyer said. “That’s two weeks in a row I think we were beat to the punch and we were out-physicalled and that needs to be addressed. I need to find out why.”
According to Harris, the reason the Falcons’ offense didn’t convert was because they weren’t in sync.
“We just came out and couldn’t get a rhythm on offense,” Harris said. “We stopped ourselves. We didn’t get a rhythm. We didn’t make plays that we’re used to making.”
The defense, however, was a different story.
The Falcons stopped the Bulls’ offense once again forcing them to punt on fourth down.
Bowling Green got the ball back on their own eight-yard line and on the second play of the drive the snap went over Harris’ head and out of the end zone to give the Bulls a safety.
“We did some stupid things,” Meyer said. “We didn’t score when we got down in the red zone and those are things we’ve done and to win that kind of game you have to do that.”
Two drives later, the Bulls struck again on a 9-yard rush by DeJuan Green to increase their lead to 16-7. Once again, the Falcons were unable to produce any offense and found themselves returning the ball to the Bulls.
“Our offense is based on finding a weak link and exploiting it and going after it,” Meyer said. “We couldn’t find it. We were trying to find it. We didn’t play well and that’s a good defense. … I think their defensive line controlled the game and our receivers had trouble getting open. They had a lot of speed on defense.”
It took the Bulls two more drives before they found the end zone. Clenton Crossley carried the ball two yards to give USF a 23-7 lead at halftime.
Neither team was able to score on their next three drives.
“I think we’re getting out-toughed,” Meyer said. “I don’t know how to explain that other than we are getting knocked back and we don’t normally get knocked back. I have to find out why and we have to evaluate why.”
Even though the Falcons’ offense didn’t go anywhere, the defense held the Bulls to just two field goals throughout the remainder of the game for a final score of 29-7.
“I do believe our defense played really hard,” Meyer said. “They had 84 plays and only 380 yards.
