Destiny has double date with Bulls and Cardinals
COMMENTARY
DETROIT –Destiny, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, which explains the divergence surrounding tonight’s Mid-American Conference Championship Game between the University at Buffalo and Ball State.
The Bulls arrived at this point in ways so miraculous they suggest that destiny is square in their corner. The last-second Hail Mary victory over Temple begot the overtime victory over Army, which begot the four-overtime win over Akron, which begot the double-overtime conquest of Bowling Green. A fumble at the goal line last week against Kent State is all that prevented the Bulls from arriving at Ford Field with a six-game winning streak and a bona fide aura of invincibility. Not once all season have they been out of a game heading into the fourth quarter. Fate, it would appear, has sided with the Bulls.
“I mean, I felt that the whole year playing in a bunch of overtime games,” quarterback Drew Willy said at Thursday’s Ford Field news conference. “Six games have come down to the last snap. This team has won for a reason and I think tomorrow night we’re going to go out and just try to be successful.”
But if you want to talk destiny, there’s plenty to say on behalf of Ball State. The Cardinals lost one of the nation’s top receivers, NFL prospect Dante Love, to a career-ending neck injury in the season’s fourth game. Logic said their attack would suffer as a result. But the Cardinals hit Ford Field having run the table, 12-0, while ascending to 12th in The Associated Press Top 25 and the BCS rankings. They’re outscoring opponents by better than a 2-to-1 margin. They are very much
for real, and the injury to Love has, if anything, strengthened the team’s bond.
“If you know Dante and were around Dante and watched him work and his work ethic and his love for the game and how he is at practice now and trying to be an assistant coach, [that’s why] he means so much to all of us and our program,” Coach Brady Hoke said. “He has helped us with the grieving or whatever you want to call that whole process, because of his demeanor, his spirit and his attitude. He’s a big part of this.”
UB’s emergence has been guided by Turner Gill, the former Nebraska quarterbacking great who put in years as an assistant but couldn’t land a head job until Warde Manuel, the Bulls’ athletic director, plucked him out of the Green Bay Packers organization. In three years, the coach no one would hire has transformed a woebegone UB program.
Does what Gill has accomplished at UB suggest the Bulls are preordained champions? Perhaps. But how does uplifting story trump that of Hoke? The Cardinals’ coach is a Ball State alum. His wife and daughter are Ball State alums. Unlike Gill, who saw Buffalo as his long-awaited chance to break into the head coaching ranks, Hoke regarded Ball State as his dream job, his chance to turn around a program that had fallen on hard times.
While romantics can make a case for either team tonight, Vegas has chosen sides emphatically. Ball State opened as a 13-point favorite and the spread was 14z 1/2 1/3 of Thursday. It’s not a reflection of Ball State’s offensive might so much as the distinct advantage the Cardinals possess on the other side of the ball.
Gill was on the money Thursday when he said that defense sets this Ball State team apart from those of the recent past. The Cardinals have recorded 20 sacks and parlayed that consistent pass rush into 20 interceptions. They’re going to get after Willy, particularly if the Bulls fall behind to the point where the pass becomes the one option.
However, the longer the Bulls hang close the greater becomes the pressure on a Ball State team that has seen only one game decided by seven points or fewer. A tight game down the stretch will suggest that UB does indeed have a date with destiny.
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