Second-half woes in big games costly again for BGSU football in loss at No. 8 Penn State

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Bowling Green State University’s football team dished out all sorts of looks from its offensive playbook and executed in a remarkable showing for the first 30 minutes against No. 8 Penn State on Saturday.

The Falcons, however, ran low on ammunition in the second half.

“Obviously, at the very end, we ran out of bullets at the end. We did,” BGSU coach Scot Loeffler said after his team was outscored 14-3 in the second half to fall 34-27 to the Nittany Lions at Beaver Stadium. “We had so many concentration areas [in the game] that we had to execute and get right to give us even a chance.

“At the end of the game, we got caught in two man [zone coverage]. We’ve got answers for two man; we just couldn’t get to them during the week. When you’re playing a team like this, you’ve got 5,000 issues that you’re trying to patchwork to give yourself a chance. So I’ll take full responsibility for running out of bullets, and we did. The fact of the matter is that there weren’t a lot of places to go with the ball at the end.”

After racking up 286 yards of offense, committing zero turnovers, and scoring on four of its five possessions in a high-powered first half, BGSU struggled to move the ball after the break. The Falcons had just three points, 89 yards, and two turnovers — a pair of interceptions in the final seven minutes from quarterback Connor Bazelak — in the final two quarters as BGSU’s bid for a stunning upset fell just shy.

“We did a really good job in the first half. Obviously, they were going to adjust and make some adjustments, and they played a lot more two high, two man zone coverage,” Bazelak said. “We ran a ton of plays in the first half, and I think we kind of just ran out of bullets.

“It is what it is, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to find a way to make one more play, make one more block, one more catch, one more throw, whatever it takes to win the game. Just came up a little short.”

Although BGSU was going up against one of the best teams and best defenses in the country in Penn State, the Falcons’ struggles in the second half continued a recent trend in big games. In each of its past three losses dating back to last season, BGSU couldn’t maintain a halftime lead.

Saturday’s matchup was eerily similar to BGSU’s 32-31 home defeat to Mid-American Conference rival Toledo on Nov. 14 — the second-to-last game of the 2023 regular season — in which the Falcons blew a 28-10 halftime advantage. BGSU scored on four of its five offensive possessions in that game, as well, and Bazelak’s numbers at halftime (17 of 22 for 209 yards against the Rockets) were nearly identical to what he put up against the Nittany Lions (16 of 20 for 192 yards).

In the Quick Lane Bowl a month later against Minnesota, BGSU had a slim 10-9 lead at the break before falling 30-24.

“High-caliber opponents, so they’re really good teams and they make adjustments too just like we do,” Bazelak said. “We just came up one or two plays short today, and they made one more adjustment, whatever, than we did.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to draw stuff up on the sidelines, which we were doing a little bit of, figure out stuff that will work when they make those adjustments.”

BGSU senior cornerback Jordan Oladokun said the Falcons just need to “keep playing our game” in order to carry momentum they generate from the first half to the second.

“There’s adjustments at every halftime no matter who it’s against, so we’ve just got to keep playing our game,” Oladokun said. “We harp on just [doing] your job, don’t try to do too much, and sometimes, that might get the best of us. But we’re always going to try to do our job to the best of our ability and go out there and see what happens.”

Despite another narrow loss in a high-profile game, BGSU’s belief in its ability to perform at an impressive level certainly hasn’t changed. The Falcons will need that in two weeks when they travel to Texas A&M.

“I think we had confidence coming into the game. That’s why we played so well,” Bazelak said. “I think we knew that we could hang with them, we knew that we could beat them, which we beat them in the first half. It’s just, second half we didn’t score [many] points, and you’ve got to score to win.

“We have all the confidence in the world. I think whatever the outcome of this game was, we were going to have confidence going into Texas A&M, Old Dominion, and then the MAC. So we have a ton of confidence.”