by Ball State football wants to move on from its 21-7 Mid-American Conference (MAC) loss at Northern Illinois.
“We just have to get better at everything,” Ball State head coach Mike Uremovich said. “I’m already past that game.”
In the defeat, Ball State looked lost on both sides of the ball. The Cardinals (3-5, 2-2 MAC) could not get anything going, and with three turnovers, they never found the momentum to keep the Bronze Stalk trophy in Muncie. With the loss, they are 0-5 on the road.
But the Red and White are undefeated at home (3-0), and after suffering that loss Saturday, Oct. 25, they now host a midweek MAC contest Wednesday, Nov. 5, against Kent State (3-5, 2-2 MAC).
The Golden Flashes are in sixth place in the conference and are coming off a 24-21 triumph over Bowling Green. On Thursday, Oct. 30, it was announced that interim head coach Mark Carney was no longer a fill-in, taking the official title of head coach.
Uremovich respected the move and the direction the fellow MAC program was heading.
“That’s good, and they should have. He’s got them playing their butt’s off, and he’s done a great job,” he said. “Just the way they’re playing should give them momentum, and it was a good win for them their last time out. We know what we’re going to get from them.”
On the field, Kent State is led by redshirt sophomore QB1 Dru DeShields. He has 1,109 passing yards and 11 touchdown passes on the season. On the ground, the Golden Flashes have 701 yards and five touchdowns. Redshirt junior running back Gavin Garcia leads with 321 yards and has one score.
In the Cardinals’ last performance against the Huskies, both sides of the ball struggled. Because of that, Uremovich doesn’t want to take anything for granted. He said that effort and the team’s improvement start in practice.
“Just getting better every week,” he said. “That’s what everyone has to do as a football team. Just continue to get better and improve day by day.”
Cardinals’ senior QB1 Kiael Kelly said one of the things the offense has to get better at is finishing drives.
“We have to score points when opportunities present themselves,” he said. “We turned the ball over more than they did, and we didn’t help out our defense either.”
In the loss, Kelly had 136 passing yards and threw one touchdown pass. But he also committed two turnovers after throwing two interceptions. He said these types of mistakes are things he needs to get better at, and that an extended break between games could be an important opportunity for that.
“Part of you wants to get back out there right after a game like last week, but the other part of you needs the rest,” he said. “We have extra days to prepare and ultimately get ready for the back half of the season.”
Redshirt sophomore defensive tackle Darin Conley echoed Kelly’s thoughts.
“From a football perspective, we have so much time to watch films. We have so many extra days to get more hours of film in,” he said. “Having that makes a big difference, and with that rest in, we should play fast on Wednesday.”
Due to the extensive time to go over things, Conley said he saw ‘here-and-there’ mistakes from the Ball State defense against Northern Illinois. He noticed guys sometimes missing easy assignments, and because of that, entire plays collapsed.
The Cardinals allowed 370 offensive yards and gave up 5.4 yards per rushing play. Conley said that set the motto for the last week of practice.
“The emphasis is just doing your job. I talked to the defensive line today. The run game should be boring, and we should be sitting in our double teams and filling our gaps,” he said. “We don’t need to do too much or make extra plays. We can’t get out of our own assignments.”
But there was one other thing that stood out to him: the team’s low sense of energy. It’s something he wants to see corrected when Ball State takes on Kent State at 7 p.m. at Scheumann Stadium.
“It’s just that mindset of we need to have this win … Whatever it is, we need to lock in, and having that, we’ll have energy from that,” he said. “It stems from what happens early in the week, and that’s what we’ve tried to work on … You have two options. You can lie down and forget the season, or you can come back and learn and get better.
“We still have everything we want in front of us, and we still have these good teams that want to beat us. I, our defense and our team are not just going to lie down.”
Contact Zach Carter via email at zachary.carter@bsu.edu, zachcarter039@gmail.com or via X @ZachCarter85.
