Over The Pylon

Those that just saw the end of the Ball State-Toledo game are probably left speechless… or spouting profanities.  I fell into the latter category.  But I’ve somewhat regained composure, and I’ll keep it clean here.

Ball State had every opportunity to win this game, and it wasn’t completely reliant on their talent.  Toledo all but handed the Cardinals the game, and we failed to capitalize.  I mentioned in our OTPCast Toledo’s tendency the commit penalties.  Today they had 99 yards in penalties, far exceeding their season average.  Still, Ball State couldn’t take advantage.

This will no doubt come up this afternoon and into next week, but Parrish’s call to go for two down 28-29 with less than one minute to go was an irresponsible gamble.  Yeah, it worked out, but how many times out of ten will that really work?  Thankfully the game wasn’t lost due to this play call, but there will be many out there that will use this as anti-Parrish ammo.

So where does this leave us?  Well, the Cardinals did look a little better today than they have all season offensively.  But Page got hammered out there thanks to the o-line holes, and at times was slow to get back up.  The defense might have taken a slight backwards step, especially on Toledo’s long passing plays.  But seriously, when you’re handed turnovers and penalty yards on a silver platter and still can’t come up with the win?  This isn’t good folks.

I guess the right thing to do now is to pick up the pieces and move on to the game at Temple.  But I feel like I’ve just been kicked in the sack.  So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to ice down my cubes and watch some more games.

Oh, almost forgot. Here’s a little montage to help explain this moment.  Can’t always get what you want, indeed:

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