Kyle Grantham / Staff Photographer / kg116806@ohiou.edu

Trailing by six on fourth-down-and-four from Ohio’s five-yard line Saturday, Wyoming quarterback Karsten Sween threw an incomplete pass that seemingly gave Ohio the win. Then came the whistles.

Ohio coach Frank Solich called a timeout just before the ball was snapped, giving the Cowboys the second chance they needed. On the next play, Sween found Michael Ford on a slant route in the end zone to give Wyoming (3-1) a 34-33 victory.

“We wanted to give some more thought on what we wanted to do in terms of front and coverage,” Solich said. “It seemed like we had some questions about what we wanted to get done, so the timeout was used to make sure everyone was on the same page.”

The Bobcats (2-2) lost the game despite holding a 20-6 halftime lead, creating seven turnovers and scoring both a special teams touchdown and a defensive touchdown.

“We just lost the game,” an obviously upset Michael Mitchell said. “We just got beat.”

Ohio didn’t have an answer for Wyoming’s ground game in the second half, as the Cowboys gained 207 of their 267 yards in the final two quarters.

On the first drive of the second half, quarterback Brad Bower eluded a sack and lofted a pass deep down the field to an awaiting Kalvin McRae for a 49-yard gain that set up kicker Michael Braunstein’s third field goal of the day, which extended Ohio’s lead to 23-6.

That’s when Wyoming’s running back tandem of Devin Moore and Wynel Seldon got going.

Moore gashed the Bobcat defense for 34 yards on the ensuing drive, finishing it off with a one-yard touchdown run.

Two Wyoming drives later, Moore sprinted 42 yards down to the Ohio 32-yard line and then scored from 17 yards out to cut Ohio’s lead to three at 23-20. After the Bobcats were forced to punt, Wyoming looked to take its first lead since the 10:48 mark of the first quarter.

Wyoming backup quarterback Ian Hetrick replaced Sween after he threw his third interception of the day. Hetrick wouldn’t fare any better, as his first throw of the game was picked off by defensive end Jameson Hartke. Hartke dove into the end zone after taking the interception back 30 yards to put the Bobcats up 30-20.

Ohio’s defense, however, couldn’t come up with an answer for Wyoming’s ground game, as Seldon capped off an eight-play, 63-yard drive with a four-yard touchdown run to pull the Cowboys within three again at 30-27. “We thought they were going to run the ball on us, and they tried that, and we stopped it in the first half, and I’m not sure what happened in the second half,” Hartke said.

“We started to wear down a little bit, started to get tired. Fatigue settled in a little bit and they started to get a little movement on us.”

Mitchell intercepted his second pass of the day after Sween came back in and returned it 49 yards to Wyoming’s 30-yard line with just 7:15 remaining in the game, but Ohio’s offense would stall in the red zone once again.

Braunstein set a school single-game record with his fourth field goal of the day to give Ohio a 33-27 lead.

Of Ohio’s four red zone trips, three ended with a Braunstein field goal and the other ended with a McRae fumble.

“There were a lot of plays that went by the wayside as an offensive unit. We had some good field position. We had way too many field goals,” Solich said. “It caught up with us at the end of the game.”

The Bobcat offense had trouble finding any kind of rhythm in the second half after putting together some big plays in the first.

Bower completed the longest pass of his career, a 68-yard touchdown pass to tight end Andrew Mooney to complete a five-play, 94-yard drive in the second quarter, but those types of drives were few and far between. Ohio gained just 82 yards in the second half and a total of 292 yards for the game.

Wide receiver Chris Garrett provided a big play of his own when he returned a kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter. It was Garrett’s first touchdown on a kickoff and the second-longest return in school history.

Garrett had one last chance to provide a big play for Ohio, but fumbled after trying to complete a hook-and-ladder play, which Wyoming recovered to end the game.