by Two hungry teams coming off double-digit losses delivered by ranked opponents, the Ball State Cardinals and Central Michigan Chippewas entered Kelly/Shorts Stadium hoping to change their fortunes, but in a game that saw two electric drives, both within the final two minutes of competition, it was the Chippewas who left with their heads held high.
As the clock hit the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter of a highly contested game, the ball was in the hands of Ball State’s redshirt freshman quarterback Kadin Semonza and with the hopes of the team on his shoulders; he delivered. In 97 yards of total offense, Semonza pushed the ball into the Chippewas’ end zone in five plays that ended in a 16-yard touchdown pass to junior tight end Tanner Koziol.
Now, with just 53 seconds left on the clock, it was Central Michigan’s time to respond. In similar fashion to the way the Cardinals forced the ball down the field, redshirt junior quarterback Joe Labas, senior running back B.J. Harris, and redshirt sophomore quarterback Bert Emanuel Jr. delivered a five play, 75-yard drive that resulted in a 3-point win for the Chippewas and a crushing loss for the Cardinals.
Following the game, Ball State Head Coach Mike Neu described the Mid-American Conference opener as a “gut-wrenching loss” that resulted from the many big plays that the team gave up throughout the contest’s most pivotal moments.
“Too many big plays,” Neu said. “That just simply can’t happen. We have to continue to work hard on cleaning up some of the mistakes that we’re making, but that doesn’t take away from the effort by Kadin. It was a tough task for a quarterback that is a redshirt freshman to throw him in there and say ‘hey, take this time 95 yards and go execute,’ and that’s what he did.”
Semonza finished the contest with a career high 285 passing yards to go along with three touchdown passes. The redshirt freshman has thrown above a 60 percent completion rate through the season’s first three games.
The Cardinals top two offense weapons, Koziol and senior running back Braedon Sloan, produced similarly productive afternoons with Koziol racking up a career high 112 receiving yards and Sloan earning 95 yards on the ground.
Following the game, Neu noted that no one on the team should blame anyone else for the loss.
“I told our guys that there’s no finger pointing here,” Neu said. “We win together. We lose together.”
Redshirt freshman Elijah Davis and Semonza both retained this sentiment, expressing support for their fellow teammates in the face of what was a devastating loss.
“If I fall down, they’re right there to pick me up and if they fall down, I’m picking them right back up,” Davis said. “We’re a family.”
Ball State now has a week to prepare for a non-conference foe in the form of James Madison, where the Cardinals’ defense will undoubtedly be challenged once again on Sept. 28, facing an opponent who is coming off a 20-point win that saw the Dukes putting up 70 points against the North Carolina Tar Heels.
