Ball State Beats Bowling Green 32-31 in Overtime on a Winning Two-Point Conversion

BOWLING GREEN, OHIO · SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2026

Some wins are worth more than the standings say they are, and Ball State found one of those in Ohio on Saturday. The Cardinals beat Bowling Green 32-31 in overtime, a game they had no business still being alive in with five seconds left in regulation, and finished it the boldest way a college football game can be finished: not with an extra point and another overtime, but with a two-point conversion for everything. According to The Star Press, the victory was Ball State's first Mid-American Conference win under head coach Mike Uremovich, and the USA TODAY network reported it was also the program's first road win in two years. Two years. That is a long time to keep boarding buses and coming home with nothing, and it ended on one throw, in one loud moment, at the end of a very long afternoon.

Start with the finish to regulation, because without it none of the rest happens. Ball State trailed late, the clock was down to its final seconds, and the Cardinals needed a touchdown just to survive. What they got, according to The Star Press, was quarterback Keldric Luster doing the thing quarterbacks dream about in the backyard: scrambling, extending the play, keeping his eyes up while everything around him broke down, and finding Eli Hohlt for a 20-yard touchdown with five seconds left. Five seconds. One second less of scramble, one step slower on the route, and the game ends right there with Bowling Green celebrating. Instead the extra point was good, the score was 24-24, and a game that looked finished was suddenly going to overtime with all of its momentum wearing Ball State colors.

Bowling Green struck first in overtime

Overtime in college football has a way of punishing the team that celebrates too early, and Ball State nearly learned that lesson the hard way. Bowling Green got the ball and, as the USA TODAY network reported, Austyn Dendy scored on an 8-yard run to put the Falcons back in front, 31-24, with the extra point attached. That is the cruelest sequence in the sport: you produce a miracle to force overtime, your defense cannot get the stop, and now you have to do the whole thing again, this time knowing that anything less than a touchdown ends your season's best afternoon in defeat. Plenty of teams fold in that exact spot, and honestly, nobody would have been shocked if Ball State had. The emotional swing from tying a game at the death to trailing again three snaps later is enormous.

The Cardinals did not fold. According to The Star Press, TJ Horton scored a rushing touchdown to pull Ball State within a point at 31-30, and that is where this game stopped being a football game and became a decision. Kick the extra point, tie it again, and play a second overtime on the road, in a building that had already watched its team retake the lead once. Or end it right now, one way or the other, with a single play from close range and your quarterback holding the ball. Ball State head coach Mike Uremovich chose the ending. The Cardinals went for two.

One play for everything

Here is the thing about going for two in that spot: it is easy to call it brave after it works. If it fails, the same decision gets called reckless on every drive home. But there is a logic to it that has nothing to do with bravado, and Saturday was a textbook case. Ball State was the road team. Ball State had already spent its miracle. The longer a game like that goes, the more it favors the home side that has already shown it can score in the extra period. Uremovich had a quarterback who had just authored the play of the season on a scramble drill, a defense that had just been scored on, and one snap to decide the whole thing. According to the USA TODAY network, Luster delivered again, connecting with Alex Scherle for the winning two-point conversion and a 32-31 Ball State victory. One quarterback, two season-defining throws, about as much pressure as the sport can stack onto a college kid's shoulders.

The Star Press framed the win as a first for Uremovich in MAC play, and that framing matters more than it might look on a results page. New head coaches do not get to pick their breakthrough wins, and they rarely arrive neatly. They arrive messy, on the road, in overtime, with the season wobbling. A first conference win like this one does something a routine home win over an overmatched opponent simply cannot do: it gives a locker room proof. Proof that the scramble drill in practice is worth running. Proof that the two-point call from the sideline is trust, not panic. Proof that two years of road frustration is a streak, and streaks end. You can read more of our college football coverage on the Previously sports front, where afternoons like this one tend to echo for a while.

What Bowling Green will see on film

For Bowling Green, this one will sting in a very specific way, because the Falcons did almost everything required to win it twice. They held the lead at the end of regulation, they watched a quarterback scramble turn into a tying touchdown with five seconds left anyway, they regrouped, and they scored first in overtime behind Dendy's run to restore the lead at 31-24. According to The Star Press, that still was not enough, because Ball State answered with Horton's touchdown and then declined to play for a second overtime. Home losses in conference play are damaging enough; home losses where you led in the final seconds of regulation and again in overtime have a way of following a team into the next week's preparation, whether the coaches admit it or not.

There will be a temptation, in both locker rooms, to treat a one-point overtime game as a coin flip that happened to land one way. Resist it. The details say otherwise. Ball State's win was built on two specific, repeatable things: a quarterback who kept plays alive without losing his head, and a head coach who understood exactly where his team stood and chose the highest-leverage play available to it. Luster's tying touchdown to Hohlt and his winning conversion to Scherle are the same skill expressed twice — composure when the script runs out. Teams that have that, even inconsistently, are dangerous in the MAC in the second half of a season, because this league's games keep ending up exactly where this one did: one possession, one decision, one play.

So Ball State leaves Ohio with a 32-31 win, a first MAC victory for its head coach, and a road losing streak buried after two years. Bowling Green leaves its own stadium wondering how a game it won twice got away. That is college football in October, and honestly, it is why the rest of us keep watching. For more from a busy Saturday across the country, visit our news front and the Stats Hub.