The offense gained just 118 yards in the loss.
Ryan Burbrink carries the ball upfield against UMass Saturday at Gillette Stadium.
FOXBOROUGH — After its loss to Western Michigan two weeks ago, the University of Massachusetts football team acknowledged it took a step back.
After Saturday’s loss to Bowling Green, the Minutemen looked like they went all the way back to Week 1 at Rentschler Field.
The Falcons held the Minutemen to 118 yards, forced four turnovers and succeeded in spoiling UMass’ homecoming game, defeating the Minutemen 24-0 at Gillette Stadium in front of a crowd of 10,846.
Like an oversized snake, the Bowling Green defense slowly strangled the life out of the UMass offense.
Quarterback Mike Wegzyn threw for 23 yards on 9-of-25 passing, and his final toss was picked by Bowling Green linebacker Dwayne Woods, who ran it back 48 yards for a score that virtually ended whatever chances UMass had at that point.
“We went for the hard throw rather than the easy throw,” UMass coach Charley Molnar said. “We left the pocket when protection was good. We don’t always have good protection, but when it is good, we have to stay in the pocket, go through our reads and today we just kind of abandoned a lot of forward progress that we had made.”
Wegzyn accepted his culpability in his postgame comments.
“Personally, I take it in my hands,” he said. “As a quarterback, I need to lead the offense and get things going, even when they’re not. I didn’t do that today.”
The running game wasn’t much better, gaining 85 yards on 26 carries, and setting the offense up with third-and-long more often than not. As a result, the Minutemen were 1 of 16 on third down.
“Horrific, absolutely horrific,” Molnar said of the third-down production. “We’ve got a pretty broad third-down package that we work on week in and week out … but we just couldn’t execute them today.”
The only gasps of air showing life the Minutemen had were on Falcons penalties — of which there were plenty — 15 for 130 yards, but UMass could never capitalize, coming up short time after time when it mattered most.
“I would say so much of it was just not executing. Just pull your hair out type of things that some of the guys did, and these are just basics,” Molnar said. “Offensively, we didn’t have it. We couldn’t do it. Simple things are difficult when you’re young. Simple twists that veterans pick up play after play … we can’t pick up a twist to save our life.”
The Minutemen’s defense kept them in the game over a half — a monumental task considering the offense picked up just three first downs in the half — and UMass trailed just 7-0 at the break on a 16-yard screen pass from Bowling Green’s Matt Schilz to Shaun Joplin in the first quarter.
“Guys absolutely could taste it. They saw an opportunity in front of them,” Molnar said of the mood at halftime. “They really trusted that the offense would get on track, and defense was going to keep doing what they were doing. ... After a while, the defense gave them no reason to live.”
True freshman linebacker Kassan Messiah spearheaded the defensive effort with a career-high 16 tackles, senior linebacker Perry McIntyre added 12 while true freshman cornerback D’Metrius Williams had seven tackles and three pass breakups (along with a viral halftime mistake).
But the defense cracked again after back-to-back pass-interference penalties on Darren Thellen and Williams set up a 2-yard pass from Schilz to tight end Alex Bayer.
Wegzyn’s interception turned touchdown was the final Bowling Green touchdown, and the Falcons added a 42-yard field goal from Tyler Tate in the fourth quarter to round out the scoring.
Ultimately, the game was a second straight step back for the whole offense, and especially Wegzyn, who had put together consecutive good performances against Miami (Ohio) and Ohio in games four and five.
“Performance-wise, I’d say that he’s not matched that. It’s not exactly like he’s trying to scale Mount Everest to get back up to that level of performance,” Molnar said. “Things that he does in practice every day — even tougher things — today he just didn’t do it. … If we’ve got too much on his plate, then we need to take some off.”
If Molnar makes changes, he’ll have to implement them quickly. The Minutemen take on SEC foe Vanderbilt in Nashville next Saturday at 7 p.m.