Good morning, Western New York. Kendra Woolcott with your Bulls weather report. Current conditions: 4-3, 2-1 in the MAC, two straight wins and a light breeze of optimism off Lake Erie. Wind chill: irrelevant, because we're dressed for it. Extended outlook: Bowling Green rolls in Saturday, and I see a high-pressure system parked over Broadview Stadium. Bring a parka and a pass rush.
Part 1: Storm Warning, Then a Clear Sky in Overtime
Buffalo beat UMass 25-18 in overtime on Saturday at Broadview Stadium. That's the kind of game where the sky changes every 10 minutes, so let me give it to you in weather terms.
First half: scattered special teams with a chance of chaos. Phillip Folmar returned a kickoff 71 yards to set up an Oliver Hautanen field goal. Sedrick Vessah sacked the UMass quarterback for a safety. Joseph Stoever recovered a muffed punt to set up another Hautanen field goal. UMass recovered one of ours, too, and turned it into a short touchdown. UMass led 15-8 at halftime. Cloudy.
Third quarter: clearing. Jason Wright hit Clint Walker for a 2-yard touchdown, and it was 15-15.
Fourth quarter: a sudden front. UMass's Derek Morris, who had missed two field goals earlier, made a 53-yarder with less than two minutes left to put the Minutemen up 18-15. But AP says Buffalo answered with a quick drive, and Hautanen hit a 29-yarder with 2 seconds left to force overtime. That's his third field goal of the day. That kicker is a snowplow. He clears the road.
Overtime: sunshine. Wright found Walker again, from 15 yards, for the 25-18 lead on our first possession. Then UMass's Logan Inagawa threw incomplete into the end zone on fourth down. Game over, roads open, school's back on.
Messiah Burch ran 28 times for a career-high 172 yards, per AP, with a long of 46. He leads the team with 661 rushing yards. Walker caught seven passes and both touchdowns. SaVeon Brown made 10 tackles and has 59 this season. Miles Greer had a sack and seven tackles. Kobi Blackwell intercepted Inagawa. And per AP, Buffalo is now 2-0 in the Flagship Cup against UMass, a series named for each school's standing as the flagship university of its state.
Honest weather note: the passing game was foggy. Wright went 16 of 35 for 134 yards, and we turned it over twice. AP's preview lists our passing offense 128th in FBS. Something to work on while the leaves fall.
The bigger picture, though, is sunny. We beat Toledo 23-8 on the road on Oct. 10. Now we've won two straight, and we're 2-1 in the league.
Part 2: The Falcons Fly In
Saturday, 3:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN+, Bowling Green at Buffalo, Broadview Stadium.
Let me be fair to the Falcons first. Bowling Green is 2-1 in the MAC, after wins over Miami (Ohio) and Sacramento State. Myles Bradley has seven sacks, which is a real front moving through. Dorian Pringle has 66 tackles. Jay Kastantin completes 66.5% of his passes. And AP ranks BG's pass defense 28th in FBS. That's a real defense against the throw.
Now for the forecast, and it's looking great for us. All rankings are from AP's preview.
Bowling Green's offense averages 280.4 yards a game, 136th in FBS. It scores 18 points a game, 129th. It runs for 106 yards a game, 127th. That offense moves like traffic on the Thruway in a lake-effect band.
Bowling Green's run defense is giving up 209.6 yards a game, 132nd in FBS. And BG's red zone defense ranks 129th, letting opponents score on 95.2% of trips. So here's the plan: hand Burch the ball. Then hand him the ball again. Our rushing offense ranks 58th at 165.3 a game, and he just ran for 172.
And then there's last week. Bowling Green tied Ball State with 1:12 left, then scored on a 35-yard fumble return to lead by seven with 1:01 left. And it still lost. Ball State drove 78 yards and scored on the final play of regulation, and then won on a two-point try in overtime. Per AP, Bowling Green had six defensive backs lined up at the goal on that last regulation snap, and the receiver was still wide open. That's a snow day nobody saw coming.
BG also lost at home to Tarleton State in its opener, 20-13. Tarleton State is an FCS team.
Now, the history. According to CollegeFootballData.com, Buffalo won 28-3 at Bowling Green last season, and the Bulls have won four of the last six meetings, including 49-7 in 2019 and 38-7 at BG in 2022. And Wikipedia remembers Nov. 21, 2008, when Buffalo beat Bowling Green 40-34 in double overtime to clinch its first outright MAC East title. Two weeks later, Buffalo beat Ball State 42-24 at Ford Field for the 2008 MAC championship. Buffalo's sky has been clear against the Falcons for a while.
A little more program history for the newcomers, since I'm in a sharing mood. Wikipedia says UB switched its mascot to the Bulls in 1931 to tell the school apart from the city's pro teams. The Bulls moved up to Division I-A in 1999, and in 2019 they won the first bowl game in program history, beating Charlotte 31-9 in the Bahamas Bowl. A Buffalo team playing in the Bahamas in December. That's the best weather report I've ever filed.
Tales From Two Towns
Buffalo. My city of 278,349 sits on the eastern shore of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River on the Canadian border, per Wikipedia. Buffalo was picked as the terminus of the Erie Canal in 1825. It hosted the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, whose centerpiece, the Electric Tower, had more than two million light bulbs. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Martin House here. And Wikipedia says Buffalo is known for its winter weather, Buffalo wings, the Bills and the Sabres. You come to Buffalo for wings, you stay for the snow, and you leave with a parka you didn't know you needed. UB moved its home to the town of Amherst, just north of the city, in 1985, and Broadview Stadium opened in 1993 to host the World University Games.
Bowling Green. Bowling Green, Ohio, is a nice college town of 30,808, the seat of Wood County. But Wikipedia says the land was once the Great Black Swamp, and it was drained and settled in the 1800s. And here's the best part. Bowling Green was named after Bowling Green, Kentucky, by a retired postal worker who had once delivered mail there. So Bowling Green, Ohio, is named for a different town in a different state that a mailman liked. Buffalo got its name from a creek. Bowling Green got its name forwarded.
To be fair, BG has a fun Black Swamp Arts Festival every September. But it's the only Bowling Green in the MAC, and it's still not the original.
Kendra's Seven-Day Outlook
1. Run Burch until the snow melts. 2. Clear up the passing game. Fog advisory in effect. 3. Keep special teams sharp. Folmar and Hautanen just won a game.
Stay warm, Bulls fans. Bring a thermos, bring a friend, bring the whole family, and bring your loudest voice, because this team has earned a home crowd that sounds like it believes.
My call: Buffalo Bulls 27, Bowling Green Falcons 20.