It’s a four-point ball game with just under three minutes remaining in the game. After a 13-yard rushing score from Terion Stewart where he brought out an emphasized arm bar, Old Dominion has the football at their 21-yard line.
“That’s where we have to end the game, right there. If you look back, we can say the field goal, the penalty [and] the two-minute drive – the game should have been ended there. That’s where we missed an opportunity,” head coach Scot Loeffler said postgame.
And Bowling Green had all the momentum.
With a backup quarterback carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders standing in front of them, all Bowling Green’s defense needed to do was get a stop.
“There is a lot of resiliency right there… A kid who didn’t get to finish a game he started last week. He comes in here and, he’s the guy who gets to finish the game,” Old Dominion skipper Ricky Rahne said. “He believes in himself and he went in there, did he play perfect? No, but he did a lot of things that helped us win that game.”
You get the Monarchs to a third-and-six from their own 40.
Incompletion. Fourth-and-six.
Whilst evading pressure, redshirt freshman Colton Joseph delivered a strike in the middle of the field to a wide-open Pat Conroy for 15 yards to move the sticks for ODU.
“We need to control the quarterback. Whenever the passer [Old Dominion QB Grant Wilson] went out of the game … They are very good. He’s a good runner. That’s what he does,” said Loeffler.” He’s a running, stout quarterback. We just lost contain, but that didn’t lose the game. There were a couple things earlier than that [like] those last couple drives that we just didn’t do our jobs, and find a way to finish.”
Aside from a timeout taken after the play following Conroy’s grab, the Monarchs kept the pressure on, deploying the full-go, no-huddle offense, keeping Bowling Green’s defense pinned back on their heels.
After taking the clock all the way down from 2:55 to just 24 seconds, Old Dominion capped off their drive with a four-yard touchdown rush from redshirt senior Aaron Young.
“It was just fun, the whole day was just fun, that play itself, just a normal run scheme, and that’s just 11 people playing football and having fun,” Young said. “My number got dialed up and being able to execute, that’s what happened.”
The score gave ODU the final lead of the game, 30-27.
“They made one more play than we did, probably on both sides of the ball, and what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to find a way to finish,” Loeffler said. “Just like I said last week in the A&M game, as painful as this is, we’re getting ready to enter our season where everything’s on the line. We need to learn from this and understand that we’ve got to make one or two more plays on the other side of the ball.”
That wasn’t even where the missed chances began – that was just where they ended.
After taking a 21-17 lead in the third quarter, Bowling Green lost the ability to move the football.
After forcing an Old Dominion three-and-out, Bowling Green went out and did the same. Following another Monarch punt, Bowling Green punted it right back after taking just 3:24 off the clock.
Again, the defense held ODU to another three-and-out. With the football in Old Dominion territory, a holding call pushed BG back to their 44-yard line.
Then, Connor Bazelak threw an interception at the worst time. Jahron Manning brought the pick all the way back to Bowling Green’s 21-yard line, hurdling Bazelak in the process.
“That was a great play – that was where the ball was supposed to go. Our receiver stemmed in man coverage and drifted up the field, let the defender undercut him,” said Loeffler. “Nine times out of ten, that’s where the ball is supposed to go. It was man coverage, the crosser was there, and we didn’t do a good job with the detail.”
Old Dominion made quick work of the short field gifted to them, scoring in just two plays to regain a 23-21 lead.
That wasn’t where the missed opportunities began either.
Taking us back to Bowling Green’s very first drive of the game, in a fourth-and-four situation, Bazelak took a shot down the right sideline – just missing Malcolm Johnson Jr. at least for a big play, at most a walk-in touchdown, giving ODU the football back.
Then, with under two minutes to play in the first half, after a barrage of penalties pushed Bowling Green back from the ODU 10 to the ODU 33, Bowling Green brought out true sophomore kicker Jackson Kleather to attempt a 50-yard field goal.
With the remnants of Hurricane Helene turning Doyt L. Perry Stadium into a wind tunnel, Kleather, whose season and career-long is only 42 yards, was forced to kick into the wind, coming up short into the padding around the goal post.
Bowling Green’s defense had multiple opportunities to force turnovers. Senior cornerback Jordan Oladokun read and jumped a comeback route by Old Dominion’s Kelby Williams but was unable to hold on to an interception that could’ve been brought back for six.
Later on in the game, on a ball way overthrown by Joseph, safety Darius Lorfils was in the perfect position to make a leaping grab and come down with a turnover, but the ball came loose as he hit the ground.
“Anytime you get a turnover on defense, you have to capitalize. You drop two interceptions…it stings,” Oladokun said. “Just because you can turn over the ball, you can shift momentum, fans get into it, players get more into it when you create momentum like that, so you never know what happens if I pick it or if [Lorfils] picks it.”
On the brighter side of things, Bowling Green junior tight end Harold Fannin Jr. picked up right where he left off, hauling in 12 passes for 188 yards and two scores, setting the program mark for touchdowns by a tight end in a career with 11.
“I’ll just say I’m really blessed., I thank God, my teammates, my coaches for trusting in me to go out there and perform,” he said.
Bowling Green falls to 1-3 with the loss, their third in a row. Next up, they’ll open up Mid-American Conference play with a trip to Akron on Oct. 5.
Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m.
