AMHERST, N.Y. — Frank Solich took his headset off and confidently watched from the sideline as his special teams unit jogged onto the field.
Lance Leipold, Buffalo’s head coach, felt a similar way as Solich minutes earlier after Buffalo’s first drive in overtime ended with a touchdown. Jackson Baltar, however, spoiled those feelings when his point after attempt sailed outside the uprights.
Solich knew that wouldn’t happen again. Not with Louie Zervos, who hasn’t missed an extra point since 2017.
When Zervos nailed the attempt, Solich jogged onto the field while his players stormed their kicker. Ohio won its first game in Buffalo since 2009 when it defeated the Bulls 21-20 on Saturday at UB Stadium in a way not many expected — an overtime PAT.
“I didn’t think field goals were going to win the game,“ Solich said. “I didn’t know an extra point would, but I honestly thought both teams were capable of scoring more points than what we did.”
Solich is right about that. The Bobcats wouldn’t have won had it not been for two missed field goals from Baltar, who missed a 24-yard attempt on the first drive of the game and was wide right on a 46-yarder with just over a minute left in the fourth quarter that held the score at 14-14.
Ohio left points on the field, too. Zervos missed a 52-yard attempt after the ball clanked off the top of the crossbar and fell about a foot short of the uprights, and the Bobcats missed a chance to at least attempt a field goal in the third quarter when quarterback Nathan Rourke was intercepted 22 yards from the end zone.
Those mistakes helped send Ohio to its first overtime since 2017. Solich opted to put his defense on the field first despite its recent late-game struggles — it had allowed 34 fourth quarter points in the last three games — and give Rourke a shot at winning the game on one drive if his defense could force a stop from the 25-yard line.
That didn’t happen. Buffalo took six plays to score a touchdown, but the excitement from the Bulls sideline and homecoming crowd abruptly ended when Baltar botched the kick.
Ohio’s sideline, however, erupted. There wasn’t much of a doubt that it could score, too, and it only took five consecutive rushing plays from O’Shaan Allison to do it.
“We all just had faith,“ Allison said. “I knew that (Buffalo’s defense) was tired up front. Our linemen just kept going, so we just kept driving on that and I stuck with what I had to do.”
Zervos’ chip-shot kick sealed Ohio’s first MAC win of the season and halted a bruising three-game losing streak full of blown opportunities. Ohio’s defense couldn’t stop the run and was plowed with 668 rushing yards in its last three games, but it held Buffalo’s rushing attack — which entered Saturday with the most rushing attempts in the FBS — to 197 yards.
The defense didn’t allow the same big plays that robbed Rourke and the offense a shot at game-winning drives against Marshall and Louisiana-Lafayette. Instead, it kept things close and stuffed Buffalo’s draw-heavy game plan while its offense figured out how to stymie Buffalo’s defense.
That ultimately didn’t happen until overtime when Ohio started a drive at Buffalo’s 25-yard line.
No, the win wasn’t pretty. But it’s what the Bobcats needed.
“I mean, we got a win,“ Rourke said with a smile. “I think that’s the big thing. It’s just something to build on. We took a step today, but we have to take a lot more steps to get to where we want to get to.”
The Bobcats spent last week’s bye searching for their identity after a lack of explosiveness from the offense and missed tackles from the defense clouded their final three weeks of nonconference play.
They still lack a true identity after Saturday, but they proved they can still win in the MAC.
Now, with a 1-0 conference record and two straight home games ahead, Ohio is in favorable position to not only re-establish its past identity — an efficient dual-threat offense paired with a defense capable of stopping the run and forcing turnovers — but also build cushion at the top of the MAC East Division standings.
It doesn’t appear that will be as easy as past seasons, but the plan worked Saturday.
Ohio just needed some kicking help, or lack thereof, from its opponent to do it.
