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Kent State hammers Bowling Green for second straight season

BLADE/KURT STEISS

Kent State hammers Bowling Green for second straight season

BOWLING GREEN — Many of the characters changed, the start time changed, and the venue changed, but this play had been shown before.

Just like 2019, Bowling Green put up some early resistance against Kent State on Tuesday — and then the Golden Flashes ran over, around, and through the BG defense.

Kent State scored 28 straight points in the second quarter to effectively end the game, eventually leaving Doyt Perry Stadium with a 62-24 victory against the Falcons.

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After the game, Falcons coach Scot Loeffler cited a popular military saying, noting the Falcons have to find ways to embrace hard times that assuredly are not finished.

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“Right now, we've got to enjoy the suck — and it sucks,” Loeffler said. “You've got to enjoy finding a way to improve, and that's the only thing you can do.”

With the victory, Kent State started 2-0 for the first time since 1988, while Bowling Green (0-2) has looked miles away from being competitive in its first two games.

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Kent State more or less resumed where it left off last season against BG, and has now scored 124 points and gained more than 1,400 yards of offense in the past two games against the Falcons.

Bowling Green failed to stop Kent State on any of the Flashes' first six possessions, five of which ended with touchdowns.

Kent raced down the field on their first possession, using just 2 minutes, 23 seconds to move 75 yards and score a touchdown. Quarterback Dustin Crum threw a jump ball to Isaiah McKoy on a fourth down from the Bowling Green 10-yard line, and McKoy hauled in the pass over BG’s Caleb Biggers for the score.

After both sides settled for field goals on trips to the red zone, Bowling Green nabbed its first touchdown of 2020.

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Quarterback Matt McDonald rolled to his right on a play action pass, stretching the play as far as it could go before taking off and running for a two-yard touchdown to tie the game.

Then the game decidedly turned in favor of Kent State.

The Golden Flashes scored four consecutive touchdowns in the second quarter — three passing touchdowns by Crum and a rushing score by Marquez Cooper — to take a 38-10 lead into halftime.

Bowling Green committed 12 penalties, struggled to line up quickly enough to keep pace with Kent State’s offense, and did not tackle with any consistency, the last of which Loeffler attributed to BG using players who are not physically ready for the field.

“We're not tackling right now because there are some guys out there that, physically, haven't been in the weight room long enough to tackle properly,” Loeffler said. “That's a little bit out of our control, the tackling right now.”

In the second half, Bowling Green freshman running back Terion Stewart scored his first two career touchdowns, but there was little else for the Falcons to like, as the Flashes even managed to score with their second-string offense in the game.

By the day's end, Kent State had a whopping 667 yards of total offense.

“We can't sulk and have our head down,” said Falcons linebacker Kholbe Coleman. “We've got to keep moving forward.”

Bowling Green's passing game struggled again, as Matt McDonald completed 6 of 20 passes for 105 yards in wet conditions Tuesday. Through two games, McDonald has completed 28 percent of his passes.

The Falcons play MAC favorite Buffalo next week, and say they have to stay positive despite little on-field success through two weeks.

“We've got a lot to work on, we've got a lot to clean up, and we've got to chip at it every single day,” Loeffler said. “It's not a fun process right now, as we all know. But we will break the cycle.”

First Published November 10, 2020, 3:01 p.m.

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Bowling Green's Jhaylin Embry gets tackled as he runs the ball.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
Bowling Green's Caleb Biggers, right, fails to defend Kent State's Isaiah McKoy.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
Bowling Green's Jhaylin Embry runs the ball against Kent State.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
Bowling Green's Bryson Denley returns a kickoff.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
Kent State's Daniel Bangura warms up to an audience of cardboard cutout fans ahead of the game.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
Bowling Green coach Scot Loeffler.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
Bowling Green's Matt McDonald takes a snap.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
Bowling Green's Tyrone Broden makes a catch against Kent State.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
Bowling Green's Bryson Denley, right, stiff-arms Kent State's Dean Clark.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
A swarm of Bowling Green defenders bring down Kent State's Xavier Williams.  (BLADE/KURT STEISS)
BLADE/KURT STEISS
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