By Mike Garrity
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Messiah Burch spent most of his first three seasons at the University at Buffalo waiting for carries. On Saturday night, on Senior Day at Broadview Stadium, he got 33 of them, and the Bulls rode nearly every one to a 31-24 win over Bowling Green that keeps them in a five-way scramble at the top of the Mid-American Conference.
Burch, a 5-foot-9 senior from Staten Island, ran for a career-high 184 yards and three touchdowns, according to UB Athletics. His 73-yard sprint early in the fourth quarter put Buffalo ahead 31-21, and it was the cushion that held up after the Falcons cut the lead to a field goal.
It was his fifth straight 100-yard game. UB said no Bulls running back had done that since Jaret Patterson closed the 2019 season with six in a row.
“People didn’t expect us to be making this noise and I’m just so proud of everyone,” Burch said afterward, according to By The Belt. “We just gotta continue to stay humble and just keep going to work every single week and I think the best is still yet to come with this team.”
A back who wasn’t supposed to be the story
The numbers behind Burch’s run are hard to overstate. Before this five-game stretch, he had 294 rushing yards across his first 22 college games, according to UB’s pregame notes. In the four games before Saturday, he ran for 561. He carried the ball only 11 times in an injury-shortened 2025 season. He now has 118 carries this fall.
He came into the weekend leading the MAC at 94.4 rushing yards per game. His previous career high was 172 yards against UMass. Saturday was also his first game with more than one touchdown.
His scores came from 11, 2 and 73 yards. The first opened the scoring midway through the first quarter. The second, at the end of a six-play, 75-yard drive, tied the game at 21 in the third quarter.
How the game turned
Bowling Green answered Burch’s opening touchdown with 14 straight points. Quarterback Lucian Kastantin found Isaiah Dawson for an 18-yard score and Trey Johnson for a 40-yard touchdown that stood after review.
Buffalo quarterback Jason Wright tied it with 29 seconds left in the half on a 14-yard throw to tight end Clint Walker.
The second half was a run of momentum swings. A tipped pass turned into a UB interception. Then Bowling Green’s Myles Bradley strip-sacked Wright, the Falcons recovered at the Buffalo 30, and Kastantin threw a 13-yard touchdown to Nakai Amachree for a 21-14 lead.
After Burch’s second score tied it, Oliver Hautanen banked a 31-yard field goal off the upright to start the fourth quarter. Linebacker Miles Greer then intercepted Kastantin, his first career pick, and Burch went 73 yards on the next play.
Bowling Green kicked a 26-yard field goal with 3:33 left to make it 31-24. Buffalo then came up short on a fourth-and-1, and the Falcons got the ball back with about a minute left and no timeouts. Linebacker Bradley Ilunga-Bisselele tackled a receiver in bounds on the final play, and time ran out.
Johnson’s 40-yard touchdown was one of the bright spots for the Falcons. “It felt good,” Johnson told BG Falcon Media, the university’s student news outlet. “I wish we would have come out with a win tonight, but it felt good for sure.”
A win that broke UB’s own pattern
Buffalo didn’t win the way it usually does. The Bulls’ pregame notes said they were 4-0 this season when running at least 70 offensive plays and 0-3 when they didn’t. On Saturday they ran 62.
Bowling Green held the ball for 35 minutes, 45 seconds, more than 11 minutes longer than Buffalo, according to the official box score. Wright threw for only 127 yards, going 13 of 21. The Bulls lost a fumble, missed one of their two field goal tries and failed on the late fourth down.
What made up for it was the running game. Buffalo ran for 251 yards, and the Bulls weren’t flagged once all night.
The defense also came up with two interceptions: Greer’s and another on the tipped pass. Greer led the team with nine tackles, and defensive lineman Will Clark had a career-high 1.5 sacks.
That combination of a heavy rushing load and a thin passing game is worth watching over the final month. Burch has carried the offense for five weeks. Buffalo’s remaining opponents have film on all five of those games.
Bowling Green’s familiar frustration
For Bowling Green coach Eddie George, the loss sounded like an old story.
“It’s the same stuff we’re talking about,” George said, according to BG Falcon Media. “Lack of execution in critical moments.”
Kastantin threw for 217 yards and three touchdowns but was intercepted twice. Bradley’s strip-sack gave him eight sacks this season, which ties for ninth on Bowling Green’s single-season list, according to BG Athletics.
“We’re competing, but we’re not making enough plays for us to get the results that we’re looking for,” George said.
A crowded race and a short week
The win was Buffalo’s third straight and moved the Bulls to 5-3 overall and 3-1 in the MAC. It was also coach Pete Lembo’s 19th win at UB, which ties Craig Cirbus (1995-2000) for seventh in program history, based on UB’s own count.
Buffalo is one of four teams at 3-1 in conference play, along with Toledo, Miami (Ohio) and Western Michigan, according to the MAC’s weekend standings. Ohio is alone in first at 4-0.
The tiebreakers cut both ways for Buffalo. The Bulls beat Toledo 23-8 on Oct. 10, but they lost 20-17 at Western Michigan a week earlier.
The schedule now moves to weeknights. Buffalo has a bye week, then plays at Miami on Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 7 p.m., in a game between two of the 3-1 teams. After that, the Bulls play at Ball State on Nov. 11, host Central Michigan on Nov. 18 and finish at Akron on Nov. 27.
Bowling Green plays at Western Michigan on Saturday.
The Buffalo Chronicle is seeking comment from Lembo, through UB Athletics, on Burch’s workload and the offense’s balance heading into November. This story drew on reporting from UB Athletics, BG Athletics, the Mid-American Conference, By The Belt, BG Falcon Media and The Associated Press.
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