Road test proves too tough for Broncos

(Robert Youngs / Western Herald) WMU football players are caught in a storm as Ball State fans rush the field following the Cardinals’ 45-22 victory on Tuesday night.

Throughout the season, it seemed that the Western Michigan University football team was destined for greatness. On Tuesday night, with one final chance to prove this was a Bronco team for the ages, WMU succumbed to pressure.

The Broncos had every chance to seize the opportunity in front of it. With 9:36 remaining in the first half, junior quarterback Tim Hiller threw a 9-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Juan Nunez. The Broncos had just cut a 14-0 deficit into a 14-14 tie.

Momentum in Muncie had shifted to the Brown and Gold. The defense took the field after the tying score, putting pressure on Cardinal quarterback Nate Davis, forcing BSU to settle for a field goal.

But then, Western Michigan started to unravel.

After the Broncos failed to score on the next drive, Ball State regained possession. With 1:10 left in the half and facing a third-and-10 scenario, Davis found tight end Darius Hill for a 38 yard pass that put the Cardinals at the 5. They eventually found the end zone, and suddenly a 14-14 score with minutes remaining in the half turned into a 24-14 BSU advantage.

“We talk all the time that we’ve got to get off the field on third down,” linebacker Austin Pritchard said. “When we can’t do it, that’s when bad things happen to us.”

WMU faced the same plague that may have cost the team a victory against Central Michigan University. In Mt. Pleasant, the team allowed the Chippewas to convert 10 of its 15 third down attempts. On Tuesday in Muncie, Ball State converted nine of its 15 tries.

“Unfortunately, it was just one of those days,” Hiller said.

It was not only one of those days for the team, but Hiller as well. The signal caller had looked near-immortal through the first 11 games of the season, embarrassing opponents and turning heads throughout the nation. But on this night he looked as average as any other quarterback Ball State has faced.

Perhaps the game changing performance came late in third quarter. Only 23 seconds after Ball State had scored yet another touchdown to expand its lead to 31-14, Hiller did something he had never done in his career – throw a touchdown for an interception. Trey Lewis snagged a Hiller pass and ran it 36 yards to the house, giving the Cardinals a 38-14 lead with 3:24 left in the third.

“We throw a touchdown for an interception and now it’s out of hand,” head coach Bill Cubit said.
At that point, everything was going wrong for WMU. On the other hand, everything was going right for Ball State, even when it wasn’t supposed to. Lewis admitted following the game that his pick was really a fluke.

“It was actually a mixed signal between me and [head] coach [Brady] Hoke,” Lewis said. “I was actually playing the wrong defense.”

In the end, it was just too much. The mistakes were too much, especially against a team as good as the Cardinals.

“We made a lot more mistakes than they did,” Cubit said. “We had to play one of our top games and we didn’t. We made way too many mental mistakes.”

As the clock struck zero at Scheumann Stadium, the Cardinal student section was flooding onto the field, while the Broncos were reveling over a missed opportunity.

“We really didn’t deserve to win today,” Pritchard said.

Western Michigan has finished the regular season with only three losses overall and two in the Mid-American Conference. However, both losses came to the teams predicted to finish first and second in the MAC West: Central Michigan and Ball State.

There is a lot to take away from this season. WMU is almost certainly headed to another bowl game, the second in Cubit’s four-year tenure. This is a good football program with a bright future ahead. However, Western Michigan is just not quite there with the elite teams yet.

At least one program that was once the butt of the nation’s jokes has reached those heights.
“They’re [Ball State] a classic example of a team,” Cubit said.

A team that is now 12-0 and headed the MAC Championship game, as well as a potential Bowl Championship series game.

And a team that, at least this season, is on a different level than WMU.

Mike Feld, the Western Herald sports editor, is a senior majoring in journalism and can be reached via e-mail at herald-sports@wmich.edu.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=2608

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Nov 26 2008. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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