Bowling Green beat touring Air Force 40-27 at the Moose Rugby Grounds in Elkhart, Indiana Saturday. The match was part of a two-game swing through the Midwest for the Zoomies, who fell 19-17 to Notre Dame.

Played early in the morning so Air Force could make it back to South Bend for the Air Force vs. Notre Dame football game, the first half was spent with both teams feeling each other out and slugging it out in the trenches. Bowling Green finished the half in the lead 11 - 6.

“We actually were camped out quite a bit in their end, so we were disappointed to be only up 11-6 at half. They did some pretty good defending and we made some mistakes going in,” said BGSU coach Tony Mazzarella, whose team reeled off five-consecutive tries in the second half en route to a 40-6 lead.

“We kind of put it together the first 20 minutes of the second half. We took the foot off the gas a bit but still played pretty well.”

Bowling Green No. 8 Mike Ziegler, an Ohio University transfer, continued to impress as he added two tries to his team-leading total of nine so far on the season. Wing Sam Polzin added a try and conversion kick while fullback Matt Marquette and prop Steve Fritsch contributed solo tries.

With BG substituting heavily in the late stages of the contest, the AF Falcons punched in three converted tries before the BG defense stiffened up and let the game get away from them.

The match was a milestone of sorts for the BG Falcons - they had played AF four times in the past - the 1987, 1988, and 2008 sweet sixteens and on a 1991 tour to California - and had never beaten their Falcon counterparts. Former BG coach Roger Mazzarella (who had all four of the losses) commented that, "It was nice to get that monkey off our backs".

BG resumes Midwest league play next week at Ohio State.