Western Michigan rebouned nicely after last week's tough loss to Davenport with a 37-5 defeat of Kent State in their Mid-American Conference (MAC) opener Saturday.

Kent State, for their part, was playing their first conference game since moving up from DII, and acquitted themselves well in various aspects - especially in counter-rucking and handling the level of physicality - but couldn't win much of their set piece, and so played defense way too much.

"When we played Davenport, we were disappointed in how we played, and we didn't win much of our set piece," said WMU head Coach Mark Allen. "So we addressed that and we did a good job. We were much better and Kent State had to play defense most of the time. Our performance today was 180 degrees from the Davenport game."

Allen said there was no danger of the players taking a former DII team lightly simply because they were eager to put the Davenport performance behind them. No. 8 Simba Chirara was a powerhouse for WMU, and props Josh Cash and Jordan Bach led from the front as WMU improved to 1-0 in conference play.

 

Meanwhile, in the MAC South, Ohio overhauled Cincinnati 29-27 in dramatic fashion. Down 27-19 with only a few minutes left on the clock, the Bobcats sent wing Daniel jamieson over twice in quick succession to snatch victory from the Bearcats. Jamieson actually scored three tries on the day. Ohio took 12-0 toward the end of the first half with tries from Alexander Vihtelic and Daniel Morgan. But Cincinnati lock Eric Orlandi powered over right at halftime to make it 12-5. The Bearcats then inched ahead with a penalty kick from Jimmy Forde and a try from Eric Lalley. Jamieson's first try put Ohio back in front 17-13, but then Cincinnati scored two tries in the space of 11 minutes - Lalley his second, and Jake Moore his first - to take a 27-19 lead.

That set up Jamieson's heroics.

Also winning in MAC action this weekend was Central Michigan 17-7 over Louisiville. Since this was a crossover game between a North team and a South team, the game didn't count in the standings.

Here are the latest standings: