COLLEGE FOOTBALL
UB’s comeback is simply golden
Bowl invitation helps right past wrong
Up until Friday night the most significant date in the history of modern University at Buffalo athletics was the Mid-American Conference men’s basketball championship game of 2005. UB held a 19-point lead in the second half, appeared on its way to the NCAA Tournament. Then Ohio staged a frenzied rally to force overtime, where the Bobcats beat the Bulls on a last-second tap-in. And everyone in Western New York thought, “Isn’t that so Buffalo.”
Well, Western New York finally got its payback Friday night, at Bowling Green’s Doyt Perry Stadium, in a game that would determine the Mid- American Conference East football title. Down 20 points with 13 minutes left, UB staged the kind of rally the 1992 Buffalo Bills can truly appreciate as it stormed back to force overtime and upend the Falcons, 40-34. With the victory the Bulls gained a berth in the MAC Championship Game on Dec. 5 in Detroit and secured an automatic bowl bid.
The Bulls will meet either 16th-ranked Ball State, Central Michigan or Western Michigan in the MAC final. As a division winner, they’re guaranteed to appear in a bowl with a MAC tie-in, either the International in Toronto against the Big East, the Motor City in Detroit against the Big 10 or the GMAC in Mobile, Ala., against Conference USA.
The anatomy of Friday’s victory, and how it stands as a direct opposite of what transpired in basketball against Ohio, is just one of the coincidences at hand. This is also the 50th anniversary of the 1958 UB football team that received a bid to the Tangerine Bowl but declined to appear when the Orlando hosts said UB’s two black players wouldn’t be allowed on the field. And now? UB is the only Division I program in the nation with a black athletic director, black head football coach and black head men’s basketball coach.
All the Bulls have come to know the plight of that ’58 team, which was detailed in a story in the football media guide. Homegrown Willie Evans, one of the elite athletes in WNY and UB history, was one of the players prevented from playing in that game. This year’s team sensed an opportunity to right a sad wrong on a significant anniversary of the snub.
“I’ve met Willie Evans a bunch of times and he’s talked to me saying, ‘Bring it back to Buffalo,’ ” quarterback Drew Willy said. “I’m glad we could get that for him and his team back in ’58, just glad we could get it for the whole university.”
“It’s great to see this for this university, this athletic department, the student body, alumni, also for the 1958 team, in honor of them,” said coach Turner Gill. “I’m proud of our players.”
Coaches and players often allude to a “team victory,” but this time they spoke the truth. There would have been no joyous bus ride back to Buffalo if the defense didn’t shut out Bowling Green the last 13 minutes of regulation and thwart them on fourth-and-goal from the 2 on its second possession of OT. Willy isn’t sitting at the interview table wearing a “MAC East Champions” T-shirt if the offensive line didn’t find its edge down the stretch, if James Starks didn’t make like a bulldozer on the winning TD run, if Naaman Roosevelt and Brett Hamlin (Willy’s roommate) don’t become omnipresent factors in the fourth quarter and the OTs.
And what about the onside kick that set up the tying TD with 37 seconds left in regulation? Alex Pierre had the recovery, but it was executed perfectly by place-kicker A. J. Principe, who had clanked his second extra-point attempt of the night off the upright.
“We spread them out at the end, fourth quarter went to our two-minute offense kind of thing,” Willy said. “We work on it all the time in practice. Receivers made plays, guys were getting open, you know. A lot of big catches, just a lot of big plays in the fourth quarter. The onside kick was huge. Everybody played a little bit of a role in everything. Just a total team victory.”
Gill, one of the more storied players in college football history during his days at Nebraska, says he’s never seen anything like it. It’s one thing for a great team to overwhelm the competition. It’s another for a team, like the Bulls, to show such resiliency week after week. This was UB’s third overtime victory in its last five games.
“This season has been outstanding,” Gill said. “I have not been associated — obviously I’ve been involved with championship football teams — but in a season of 11 football games, I haven’t been exposed to [something like this] as a player, I haven’t been exposed to it as a coach. Obviously you have games, but not a whole season the way it’s been.”
The Bulls finish the regular season at 2 p. m. Friday against visiting Kent. Win or lose, they know another two games remain.
“I just can’t put into words what this means for these kids and the people who believed in us and invested in us,” Athletic Director Warde Manuel said. “This team is led by one of the best people I’ve ever met in this business. Turner has them believing in the staff, they don’t quit. I just think back to all the people who told us we couldn’t do this. They said it couldn’t be done. It’s a proud day, very proud.”
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