Connor Bazelak<\/a>. He is in his third college stop, having been at Missouri and Indiana before arriving at Bowling Green for his fifth season. Bazelak had an okay-enough season. He only threw for 1,709 yards, but did with a 61% completion rating. He had 11 touchdowns and seven interceptions.<\/p>\nBut it was the last four games of the season that gives Bowling Green fans some room for optimism. He completed 66% of his passes in that stretch with wins over Ball State, Kent State, Toledo, and Western Michigan. He threw for a total of about 800 yards in those games with six touchdowns and only one interception.<\/p>\n
The defense for Bowling Green is a different story. The Falcons are in the top 50 in the country in Rush defense, passing defense, and scoring defense.<\/p>\n
The Minnesota Golden Gophers<\/h3>\n
That gets us to Minnesota and how it is going to score points. The Golden Gophers finished 5-7 and lost their last four games of the season. But they made it into the post-season based on their Academic Progress Rate (APR), when there were not enough six-win teams to fill all the spots.<\/p>\n
The offense ranks in the lower half of the country in most categories. Starting quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis<\/strong> is in the transfer portal. The offense is likely to be run by fifth-year quarterback Cole Kramer<\/strong> who would be making his first start. He has thrown one pass all season\u2026an interception against UNC.<\/p>\nFrankly, the offense was struggling this season even with the duly noted Kaliakmanis. Minnesota ranked 122nd<\/sup> in the country in total offense with just over 300 yards per game. So what harm could it do to let Kramer work on his game management skills? The Golden Gophers were a moderately respectable 59th<\/sup> in the country in total defense. But they were giving up 373 yards of offense per game\u2026or more than they were getting themselves, which goes a long way to explain the 5-7 record.<\/p>\nThe offense averaged just a tick under 150 yards per game rushing. The passing game was good for 153 yards per game.<\/p>\n
When you finish writing a preview like this, it seems clear that Bowling Green should win the game. But there is this; Minnesota is 4-0 in bowl games under head coach P.J. Fleck<\/strong>. There is something to be said for teams who know how to handle post-season play.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Out of all the discussion of the number of bowl games and if everyone who is in one deserves to be in one, well the Quick Lane Bowl is going to be in that discussion. Minnesota takes on Bowling Green in the 2023 Quick Lane Bowl. And if it wasn\u2019t highlighted on your bowl schedule […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":56687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,12],"tags":[8687,7983,3446,167],"class_list":["post-56686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-bigten","category-midamerican","tag-2022-college-football","tag-big-ten-football","tag-bowling-green-falcons","tag-minnesota-golden-gophers"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}