Bowling Green quarterback Connor Bazelak looks for a receiver during a passing drill during the first day of practice on August 2 at the BGSU practice field. (Scott W. Grau/Sentinel-Tribune)
Bowling Green State University football hosts the Eastern Illinois Panthers for the home opener at Doyt Perry Stadium on Saturday.
The game will be a “White-Out” at Doyt Perry Stadium, and it will also be “Heroes Day” as members of the military, police, fire, EMS and hospital staff are honored.
“The one thing that I loved last year when we played Marshall, that was an unbelievable atmosphere here at BG,” BGSU coach Scot Loeffler said.
“I want all our fans to come out, the student section to come out. It’s amazing how much our kids enjoy having people in the stands, and it’s an advantage. It really is. We were down in Liberty and that was a great, great fan base.
“Let’s get everyone out. We’re going to play winning football this year. It’s going to be an exciting year. We’ve got a monster beginning, no question about that. It’s a monster. But, when all the dust settles, we’re going to have a good football team and we’re going to have a good record and make a run at it.”
The game starts at 2 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPN+. BGSU and Eastern Illinois are meeting for the first time in football.
Bowling Green has a perfect 11-0 all-time record against current members of the Ohio Valley Conference, which includes 8-0 against Southern Illinois, 2-0 against Tennessee Teach and 1-0 against Southeast Missouri State.
BGSU’s last game versus an Ohio Valley Conference team was in 2021 when Murray State visited Doyt Perry Stadium. BGSU won, 27-10. Murray State left the OVC and officially joined the Missouri Valley Conference on July 1, 2023. The Ohio Valley Conference has merged with the Big South Conference in a football-only alliance starting this season.
Loeffler says the all-time perfect record against OVC teams does not mean the Falcons will cruise on Saturday.
“They’re a good team. I equate them very much to a conference champion,” Loeffler said. “I think they’ve got talent everywhere. I think they’re well coached. Just like I said, we’ve got to get the ball in the perimeter to our guys.
“You can go from a very, very bad team to a very good team quickly. You can think that you’ve had the right guys in the portal and then go from you think a really good team to bad really quick because you made mistakes with recruiting.
“The days of going ‘OK, this is a game that we can win, a pushover’ those are all over. They’re all over at every level. Maybe not the top five teams in the country, but certainly at our level, those days are over. You got to play week in and week out.”
Quarterback decisions
BGSU senior quarterback Connor Bazelak (Dayton) is currently 19th in the nation with 7,442 career passing leaders among all active players.
However, Loeffler says the Falcons cannot give up five interceptions again like they did in last Saturday’s 34-24 loss at Liberty University. Loeffler said quarterback decisions were part of that.
“Yeah, there were two that were horrific,” Loeffler said. One was a play that (BGSU senior QB Camden Orth has) run for two years here. The first read was wide open for a catch-and-run touchdown.
“Connor just flat missed. When he missed the motion, the spacing of the play stunk. Whenever you have poor spacing, you’re going to see ghosts and he saw a ghost and that was a horrific decision, plain and simple. We got to clean those two up and those two can get cleaned up.”
He says the plan is to use multiple quarterbacks and see how that works.
“I really want to watch these guys. Just like I said in the postgame, (BGSU senior quarterback Camden Orth) had three interceptions all camp long. So did (senior QB) Connor (Bazelak).
“We really protected the ball well and so both of them have been playing at a high level. Unfortunately, we had some unfortunate circumstances occur and I want to see us protect the passer and see what these guys can do. Actually, I know what they can do whenever we protect them.
“Connor had it on that first third down. The pick six was a bad decision. He didn’t kick the motion. We had poor spacing on the play. He misread it. O.J. Hilaire was open for a 30-yard gain. He threw it under on the deep over rather than the V-cut, and that was a bad decision.
The decision by (Orth) on the low red, which would have tied the game, he misread the play. His first read was Scott-free open. We might still be playing to be quite honest with you. I know it would have tied the game. The guy was a walk-in touchdown. He missed the read.
“The other poor passes were a lot of protection issues. We get that cleaned up and, for the first time, I’m encouraged we can run the ball. I am and that’s encouraging.
“The only way that we’re going to be able to do that is to protect them, protect the passer. We get that cleaned up and the interceptions will reduce, dramatically, when we protect the passer. Just like I said, there’s a couple times in there that I don’t know what to tell the guy to be quite honest with you. They had no chance.
“(Eastern Illinois plays) a lot of looks, a lot of coverage in the back end, a lot of different coverages. They got a new coordinator. He was obviously hired within. So, you see some similarities of what they’ve done in the past.
“Again, you’re walking into a lot of unknown and we need to have a lot of straight progression plays, take the right drop, protect the quarterback and hit our first open wide receiver, taking the right foot work with the right body position, plain and simple.
“Most of the time, whenever you come off of a high turnover game there’s a red alert, you’re worried. I hate to say this, we made some poor decisions on Saturday, but I haven’t seen guys making poor decisions on a consistent basis.
Now, if we go out and throw a bunch of interceptions, now we got we got room to worry. But I believe in (Orth). I believe in Connor and that has not been an issue.
“I just know that at that position, I played the position, there are times that you can make a play with a guy completely unblocked in your lap, and there are times when you’re taking a seven step drop or five out of the gun where we’re trying to get a chunk play and there’s a free runner. Good luck.
“It’s a combination of things. It’s a team sport and the passing game is the most team part of football known to man. I promise you we’ll get the passing game cleaned up. That’s happening.
BGSU wide receiver Odieu Hiliare has a catch in 36-straight games, which includes his career at Alabama A&M (2019-21). It is the fifth-best active streak in the nation. The Belle Glade, Fla., native has 164 career receptions for 2,171 career receiving yards and 20 receiving touchdowns.
Running game picking up
Running back Terion Stewart played his first game at Liberty since 2021 after sitting out the 2022 season. He enters Saturday’s game with 762 career rushing yards and nine touchdowns. His 6.7 yards per carry for his career currently ranks No. 1 in program history.
The Falcons averaged 6.2 yards per rush at Liberty on 191 rushing yards. Both numbers are the best for the BGSU ground game since the 2021 season when the Falcons played at Buffalo. In that game the Falcons rushed for 221 yards on 8.19 yards per carry.
“I’d like to see Terion Stewart carry the ball more,” Loeffler said. (BGSU back Ta’ron Keith) had just three touches, but three explosions. We didn’t convert third downs because we couldn’t protect. When you convert third downs, you have more opportunities with more plays and that’ll give our backs more opportunities to touch it.
“We felt we wanted to be balanced in this game. We got to the point where they started overloading the box. Obviously, the option, that’s a new wrinkle in us, equates numbers.
“A couple times we got an odd defense, they put two outside and the option is done. They’re going to overload the box if they’re trying to run the ball and we’ve got enough playmakers on the perimeter to make some really nice plays. We just have to get all the units working together.
“The passing game is the hardest part of football. The line has to block, the tight ends have to block, the spacing of the play has to be perfect. The quarterbacks have to do their jobs. That hasn’t been our issue during training camp and it turned out to be an issue.
“If you would have asked our staff if we would have had a problem throwing the ball in this game, we would all say not even close. We were still majorly concerned with the run game. It’s college football. It’s kids. It was just the opposite of what we thought, so we need to clean it up and we will.”
International standouts
Bowling Green is one of four schools in the nation with two different international players starting at the placekicker and punter position.
Punter Sami Sir hails from Melbourne, Australia while placekicker Alan Anaya is from Queretaro, Mexico. More on page five. Anaya’s older brother Alberto is on the BGSU men’s soccer team. Anaya made his collegiate debut at Liberty in game No. 1. He was 3-of-3 on PATs and connected on a 34-yard field goal in the third quarter.
Interior linebacker Joseph Sipp Jr. had a career-high 12 tackles in the season opener at Liberty. It is the second year in a row he led the team in tackles in the season opener. Sipp had 10 stops at UCLA to open 2022 when he became the only freshman in the nation to notch 10+ stops in a collegiate debut.
Defensively, Bowling Green’s Darren Anders ranks No. 6 in the nation among active players in career tackles. Anders needs 18 tackles to reach 300 tackles. When Anders reaches that mark, he will become just the third Falcon since 2000 to do so, joining Dwayne Woods (337, 2009-12) and Brandon Harris (301, 2015-18).
Plus, special teams continue to look real good, Loeffler says.
“We feel like we’ve got three really, really good guys that can block kicks and block punts in particular. Obviously, the block field goal (for a touchdown against Liberty) was a great job. Great push by our defensive line. Dontrez (Brown) got his hands up. We had (Jordan) Oladokun completely off the edge clean.
“I was really, really proud. Blocking field goals is effort and our defensive line had great effort. They pushed the offensive line back, they got their hands up and they blocked it. This game there were so many different formations in the punt game and there was so many unknowns walking into this game that we really played it tight to the vest.
“We really didn’t go after their punter. One time we did, but once we dial-in on what someone’s doing, I think we’re going to block some punts again.
Loeffler believes his special teams coaching and playing personnel are a big part of that.
“Really fast guys that can bend and get around an edge. It’s geometry, I mean, it really is,” Loeffler said. “Those guys that can bend and get on a straight line and they’re fast.
“Obviously, I think Alex (Bayer) does a great job in terms of scheming protections. He does a great job with it, and he has a good idea of when we have an opportunity. We don’t waste time with it if we don’t think we can block one. He’s done a great job with that with that unit.”
Loeffler says this is a team with the potential to win any game with the right mindset and fewest mistakes.
“Our approach last week, it wasn’t about our opponent, it was about us. It’s the same thing. If we don’t clean up the things, it doesn’t matter who you play,” Loeffler said.
“In college football, the room for error, you never know who you’re playing anymore. I mean, you could walk into a circumstance where you’re playing 10 new dudes that gelled quickly over nine months, six months, and the next thing you know, you’re playing a heck of a defense or a heck of an offense. You just don’t know.
“So, it’s about us. We need to clean up our mistakes. We need to clean up what we can control and play really, really hard and play more disciplined and just do our jobs. That’s all we got to do. The pieces are there. We got to do our jobs and if we do that, we’re going to have a chance to win this game.”
All in the family
Bowling Green has five players who are the sons of former Falcons. Interior linebacker Jabari Mitchell (Kinta Mitchell, 1995-2000), Myles Bradley (Chioke Bradley, 1994-96), TE Jacob Harris (Josh Harris, 2000-03), S Trent Simms (Shawn Simms, 1981-84), TE Bryce Boyer (Lee Boyer, 1989-93).
Boyer (Anthony Wayne) is a fourth-generation Falcon. His dad (Lee), grandfather (Chester) and great grandfather (Rodney) all played football at Bowling Green.
Research to this point has the Boyers as one of two four-generation families in FBS history and first that is a direct line of son->father->grandfather->great grandfather. Washington State is the other, but it was a direct line of three and a maternal grandfather.
