Things were blue all right Saturday at S.B. Ballard Stadium — until they weren’t.
And then things got downright cruel.
Kyle Vantrease passed for 191 yards and a touchdown, and Buffalo survived the wildest of comebacks in a 35-34 non-conference win over Old Dominion.
The Monarchs trailed 35-7 at halftime before scoring four straight touchdowns to reach the brink of tying it with 19 seconds left.
But Nick Rice’s PAT try — turned into a 35-yard kick because of a post-touchdown celebration penalty — sailed wide right, ending one of the most thrilling games in the history of the venue.
Ultimately, ODU (1-3) fell agonizingly short of overcoming a mistake-riddled first half.
“We’re going to keep fighting to the bitter end,” said Monarchs coach Ricky Rahne, whose team outgained the Bulls (2-2) 433 yards to 297 in total offense. “There’s no one who’s going to come in here and take what we deserve. We’re just going to keep fighting. No moral victories. We can’t make some of the mistakes we made and expect to beat a good football team, but we’ve got to continue to improve.”
The Monarchs might’ve looked their best in one sense and, for a while, their absolute worst in the sense that matters most. Wearing “Hudson Blue” uniforms — so named for longtime ODU sports information director Carol Hudson — for the first time, the Monarchs committed a seemingly endless string of gaffes to fall into a major hole before snapping out of it.
Trailing 35-28 after fumbling on the Buffalo 2-yard line, ODU forced a three-and-out to get the ball back on its own 46 with 3:03 to go.
Running their already frenetic offense at top speed, the Monarchs arguably should have caught two would-be touchdown passes before a Blake Watson 10-yard run set them up on the 18.
An incomplete DJ Mack Jr. pass on first down stopped the clock with 56 seconds left. Another incompletion was followed by a pass for a 1-yard loss, setting up a fourth-and-11 play with everything on the line.
After Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” pumped the crowd during a timeout with 26 seconds remaining, Mack dropped back and threw a jump ball to the back right corner of the end zone. Tight end Zack Kuntz used every bit of his 6-foot-8 frame to pull it from the grasp of a defender, and the place went nuts.
Unfortunately for the Monarchs, so did a player on their sideline, who was flagged for coming onto the field.
That set up Rice’s kick, which knocked the air out of the place.
Rice, who became the school’s career field-goals leader last week and had missed just one PAT in his career, had the support of his teammates.
“It’s easy when you’re brothers,” Mack said. “You just talk him up.
“That’s just the way life works. And as humans and as teammates, it’s our job to keep him going. Because if not, then it could be worse.”
Mack passed for 224 yards and a touchdown while rushing for 84 yards and two scores. He threw an interception and was sacked four times.
Rahne was far from pinning the loss on Rice, whose lone previous missed extra point came on a blocked kick.
“No one play ever wins or loses a football game — ever, ever in the history of football,” Rahne said.
Speaking of history, at 3 hours, 53 minutes, the game was the longest ODU’s ever played.
In pitching a second-half shutout, ODU’s defense held the Bulls to 40 total yards on 20 offensive plays. The Monarchs had 319 yards and ran 51 plays.
“I feel like it shows the glimpses of who we can be and who we want to be and who we’ve believed we could’ve been since camp started,” said linebacker Jordan Young. “It shows the team what we want to continue to build and work towards. Every moment we spend together, every opportunity we get to play, we’re building towards that.”
What could have been a game-tying drive ended with an Isiah Paige fumble at the Buffalo 2 with 4:07 remaining.
Jon-Luke Peaker’s 7-yard touchdown run with 8:36 remaining in the fourth quarter pulled the Monarchs to within striking distance at 35-28. It ended a quick five-play, 63-yard drive that consumed just 1:48.
With his team down four scores, Mack scored a pair of unanswered third-quarter touchdowns — from 42 and 2 yards — to change the complexion of what had been a laugher, pulling the Monarchs to within 35-21 by the period’s end.
ODU trailed 35-7 at halftime after putting up just 114 total yards to the Bulls’ 252.
When the Monarchs’ opening drive of the second half ended with a fourth-and-10 sack of Mack at midfield, the exits — and probably the bars — started to fill.
Perhaps the most the announced crowd of 18,197 got worked up in the first half was when the Bulls’ Jake Zimmer was whistled for unnecessary roughness in the waning seconds after he slung Paige into the punter’s practice net on Buffalo’s sideline. The officials intervened in the ensuing skirmish, and cooler heads quickly prevailed.
With his team already leading by three touchdowns, Buffalo’s Tim Terry scooped up an Elijah Davis fumble and returned it 67 yards to give the Bulls a 35-7 lead with just over three minutes to go in the half.
Dylan McDuffie scored on a 20-yard run to give Buffalo a 28-7 lead with 3:14 remaining in the second quarter.
Vantrease’s 13-yard touchdown pass to Quian Williams gave the Bulls a 21-7 lead with 8:28 to go in the first half.
Vantrease’s 4-yard touchdown run finished a 74-yard, 11-play drive to give the Bulls a 14-7 lead just over two minutes into the second quarter.
The game marked the first meeting between the Monarchs and Buffalo, which plays in the Mid-American Conference.
ODU hadn’t played a game this season with a scoring margin smaller than 28 points, including last week’s 45-17 loss at Liberty.
Rahne said he learned something about his players as they got embroiled in their first dogfight.
“That the pressure of the moment didn’t impact their performance,” he said. “We kept playing. It didn’t matter what was going on. Our defense kept playing. Our offense kept playing. We had some things go wrong in the second half and we just kept playing.”
Special teams figured into things early and often.
The Monarchs blocked a first-quarter punt and returned it to the Buffalo 22. Four plays later, Blake Watson jammed it in to tie the game at 7 with 2:37 remaining in the period.
After ODU blocked a punt on the Bulls’ opening possession to set up the Monarchs on the Buffalo 11, Rice attempted a 24-yard field goal.
But the Bulls’ C.J. Bazile blocked it and returned it 90 yards down the right sideline for the game’s first score with 10:14 left in the first quarter.
After a calming talk from Rahne at halftime, the Monarchs managed to pull it together.
“The second half was really honed in on making sure everybody was in their spot doing their job, not trying to do too much,” Young said. “I feel like once we did that, we honestly didn’t present them with that many options.”
David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com.
