KALAMAZOO, Mich. — The Bowling Green State University football team wrapped up the regular season with a 34-10 road win over Western Michigan Tuesday night.
A 31-point first half propelled the Falcons to the victory. The win secures a winning season for the Falcons for the first time since 2015 with a bowl game still to play this season.
The Falcons finish the regular season 7-5 overall and 5-3 in the Mid-American Conference. The 2015 team won 10 games.
“We came out and got our seventh win,” BGSU coach Scot Loeffler said. “Just like I said last week, we’re playing good football right now.
“We were a point away from being undefeated in November, which that’s what we wanted to do and came up a point short.
“Super proud of our guys for putting last week to bed and coming out playing really good ball. Defensively, special teams, offense, I think we played complimentary football.”
The Falcons struck early and often in the first half, registering 10 points in less than five minutes of action.
The first drive resulted in a 35-yard field goal by Alan Anaya for the first points of the game.
Darius Lorfils carried the momentum to the defensive side of the ball with his first career interception. On the very next play, Connor Bazelak located Jaylon Tillman for a 35-yard touchdown to push the BGSU lead to 10-0.
Bowling Green held the 10-0 lead through the end of the first quarter before adding to it with touchdowns on both of their second quarter drives, including a pick-6 by Jordan Oladokun less than a minute into the second quarter. Oladokun’s trip to the house made it a 17-0 BGSU lead.
The Falcons added to their tally with a touchdown pass from Bazelak to Odieu Hiliare followed by a rushing touchdown for Ta’Ron Keith to make it a 31-0 lead.
Western Michigan tallied a field goal before half to send the teams to the locker rooms with a 31-0 score. In the second half, Anaya added his second field goal of the game and WMU logged a late score for the 34-10 final.
Bazelak completed 18-of-26 passes for 217 yards and two touchdowns, and he also ran for 18 yards. Harold Fannin Jr. caught eight passes for 99 yards and Hiliare had four catches for 42 yards. Ta’ron Keith ran for 66 yards and had 17 receiving yards.
On defense, Darius Lorfils had an interception, seven tackles, and one pass breakup. Linebacker Darren Anders had seven tackles and a pass breakup, and Jordan Porter had four tackles and two sacks.
As a team, the Falcons had four sacks and six tackles for a loss in the first half and finished with five sacks, which is tied for fourth all-time in program history with the 2014 team.
For the Broncos, Palmer Domschke kicked a 48-yard field goal to get Western Michigan on the board as time expired in the first half.
Jalen Buckley had 85 yards rushing, including a 16-yard touchdown that capped the scoring with 4:44 to play, on 18 carries for Western Michigan (4-8, 3-5).
The Falcons now await their bowl destiny and opponent.
“We need to get healthy. We need to take some time off. We need to go recruiting,” Loeffler said.
“And we need to get ready for this bowl game and find a way to get our eighth win. We keep taking steps, we keep learning and we keep moving the needle of the program.”
