For a moment, it looked as if Ohio was going to have a real chance of righting its third quarter wrongs.
The Bobcats defense let in 12 points, and the offense was held scoreless. The fourth quarter turnaround ended in heartbreak after Northern Illinois kicked a 36-yard field goal as time expired to defeat Ohio 39-36.
If Ohio’s second half were as good as its first, the homecoming celebrations would’ve gone well into the night.
In the first two quarters of the game, quarterback Nathan Rourke caught a touchdown from wide receiver D.L. Knock. Offensive tackle Austen Pleasants ran in a two-yard score. The defense had a cap on Northern Illinois’ offense.
And yet, none of it matters.
The shift was noticeable between the Bobcats' first half to second. On a first-and-10 on its own 23 yard line, NIU quarterback Marcus Childers broke off for a 70-yard run down the middle of the field. Two plays later, the Huskies scored their first of three unanswered touchdowns.
Lapses in the defense were evident. The missed tackles began to surface, and the issues that have been holding Ohio back from being the team it thinks it can be were on full display in front of the 18,019 fans that piled into Peden Stadium.
Ohio started showing signs of offensive progression in the fourth quarter, however. It scored 15 points in an attempt to mask the defensive woes, but those were too much to hide, and Ohio had too little time.
Northern Illinois’ ability to run the ball against the Bobcats in the second half is what propelled it to leaving with the win. Of its 372 total yards in the second half, 171 of them came on the ground, including the last drive of the game with two runs over 10 yards that set up the game-winning field goal.
Ohio once again will go back into the cycle of watching film and trying to find solutions for problems it hasn’t been able to solve on a consistent basis. Though it showed signs against Buffalo and the first half of NIU, the answers are still left unknown.
