BOWLING GREEN — It was the right question.
We just asked the wrong guy.
“Can you stop their offense, and can your offense match their output?”
It's about all the Toledo coach, Matt Campbell, heard over the past week leading up to the annual showdown with rival Bowling Green.
Considering the Falcons' offensive prowess, the question was understandable.
Apparently, however, we should have instead posed it to Dino Babers, the BG coach.
Because UT's Rockets were nearly unstoppable in the first half Tuesday night at Doyt Perry Stadium. And they kept it rolling enough in the second half to dispatch their rival for the sixth straight season, this time by a 44-28 margin.
“That's a team with so much talent, good skill players, and they can run the ball too, so the honest answer to that question all week was that I just didn't know,” Campbell said after the win. “But I did think there were some things we could do to counterbalance all that and No. 1 was to create some turnovers. Sure enough, it was a huge difference in the game.”
BG was guilty of five of them, one on the game's first offensive play that jump-started UT's hopes and two more in the fourth quarter that killed any thoughts of a Falcon rally.
The outcome keeps alive the Rockets' chances in the Mid-American Conference West race, not to mention the possibility these same teams could meet again for the MAC title in Detroit on Dec. 4.
“It absolutely does,” Campbell said. “We've had our backs to the wall since a tough loss [to Northern Illinois] two weeks ago. Then we had to go on the road to beat two really good good teams, Central Michigan and BG, and next week [Western Michigan at the Glass Bowl] will be more of the same.
“You know, it's been a great year for college football in northwest Ohio and, just maybe, Toledo-BG isn't over yet. This game is so important to our community, to former players, and the kids on our team, so maybe we'll see them again. I know our players will do all they can to have that happen. We'll see.”
The chances of that are certainly greater now than at kickoff with BG, already the MAC East champion, a seven-point favorite on the strength of a seven-game winning streak.
But Toledo, a Top 25 team not too long ago, scored points on its first six possessions and the Rockets were content to run out the clock on their seventh drive.
They led 30-14 at halftime after taking early leads of 20-0 and 30-7.
UT rushed for 171 yards — Kareem Hunt had 120 of his final 153 total at intermission — and finished the half with 298 yards of offense, an average of more than eight yards per snap.
Those are normally BG numbers.
But the Falcons made far too many mistakes this time.
Asked to analyze the game, Babers said he couldn't blame “the boogeyman. It was four, I guess five turnovers and a ton of penalties [eight by both teams; one against BG negating a long touchdown] against a good team.
“We just didn't execute well enough. If we make some of those plays, maybe it's a lot easier. But we didn't make some and that made it a lot harder.”
That started on the first offensive snap of the game. BG quarterback Matt Johnson threw maybe a tad high to Roger Lewis, who still should have caught the ball. But it went off his fingers and into Cheatham Norrils' hands for an interception at the BG 27.
The Runnin' Rockets — which is what Toledo should always be first and foremost — took over. Hunt carried four times and it was 7-0.
Then it was 14-0 as Hunt broke off a 41-yard run, quarterback Phillip Ely hit Terry Swanson for a short gain, and then Swanson ran it 23 yards for the score. Three plays, 67 yards, 50 seconds.
Those are normally BG numbers.
The Falcons, meanwhile, atypically went without a first down through three possessions and, after finally getting one, had a holding call negate a 46-yard scoring run by Johnson before a hit by UT linebacker Chase Murdock on running back Fred Coppet forced a fumble.
And the Rockets kept scoring and threatened to run away and hide.
Of course, the Falcons eventually got around to doing their thing and Toledo could never get comfortable. Not with BG's Gehrig Dieter catching everything thrown his way. And we mean everything.
He ended one half and started the other with a pair of improbable, one-handed TD catches and added another score along the way, but his fourth-quarter fumble on a hit by Rocket safety Rolan Milligan took the wind out of BG's sails.
When Toledo responded with a nine-play, 64-yard touchdown drive for a 16-point lead, the outcome seemed well in UT's hand. And it was sealed when Murdock ended one BG possession by tipping away a fourth-down pass and Norrils ended another with his second interception.
“We'd won seven games in a row and that's hard to do,” Babers said. “That's two months of winning, so obviously a loss is difficult. And who we lost to makes it more difficult.”
Contact Blade sports columnist Dave Hackenberg at: dhack@theblade.com.
First Published November 18, 2015, 5:52 a.m.
