Emporia State 19, Washburn 20: Three Missed Field Goals Walked a Win Out of Welch

The game

Washburn 20, Emporia State 19. The 122nd Turnpike Tussle went the way the Bods wanted it, with Battle's 33-yarder leaving no time on the clock. It was set up by an 11-play, 40-yard Washburn drive that burned 4:22 off the fourth quarter, right after we had failed on a 37-yard try from the same hash.

Brandon McCary went 1 for 4. He connected on his 28-yarder in the first quarter. He missed from 32 in the second after a six-play drive into the red zone, missed from 39 in the fourth after a 13-play, 66-yard march to the WAS22, then missed from 37 one possession later. Any of those three makes and the Hornets are 9-1. All three missed and the Hornets are 8-2, same as if we had not kicked at all.

The other number that beat us was possession. Washburn had the ball for 38:12 to our 21:48. They had drives of 7:20, 6:53, 5:29 and 4:22. When a team doubles your time of possession, your kicker has to be perfect. He was not.

Jamison Sarver was 30 of 48 for 252 yards and two scores, both to Malik O'Atis, with no interceptions. O'Atis caught 10 for 77 with a long of 22, which meant he was moving the chains three and four yards at a time on his way to both touchdowns. Trenden Collins had six for 53, Ethan Schultze seven for 45, Charles Morgan added four for 40. We threw it 48 times because we could not run it. 23 carries for 64 yards is 2.8 a pop, and the longest run of the night, a 13-yarder, belonged to Camden Crooks.

Landon Boss was back, and Boss was Boss: 13 tackles, nine solo, a tackle for loss and a sack. Tyler Schultze had nine, Carlos Strong Jr. seven with a sack of his own, Clem McCullough five, Aidan Hicks and Elias Jones broke up passes in the back end. We got the ball turned over our way once, a Christopher Johnson II interception of Logan Madden in the second quarter when a Washburn score would have made it 14-12.

How it unfolded

First quarter: Hornets 12. Washburn's opening drive ended in a safety when Jacoby Ogbonna lost a Madden handoff six yards back into his own end zone. 2-0. McCary connected from 28 four plays later. 5-0. Sarver found O'Atis for an 8-yard score at the end of a 76-yard, 5-play drive and the PAT made it 12-0 with eight minutes left in the second quarter.

Second quarter: Bods 10. Nathan Lewis Jr. caught a 12-yarder from Madden to cut it to 12-7. We marched inside the Washburn 20 on the next possession and McCary missed from 32. Battle hit from 27 before the half. 12-10 at the break, and the complexion of the game had already changed.

Third quarter: 7-7. We opened the second half with an 11-play, 67-yard drive that ended with a second Sarver-to-O'Atis 8-yarder. 19-10. Washburn came right back with a 12-play, 52-yard answer finished by a Keller Hurla sneak, and the PAT made it 19-17. The quarter ended with Washburn driving on what became Battle's third-attempt field goal.

Fourth quarter: Washburn 3. Battle hit from 33 at the top of the fourth to make it 20-19. We answered with a 13-play drive to the WAS22 and missed from 39. Washburn punted. We drove 27 yards and missed from 37. Washburn ran one play and the clock hit zero.

Here is the uncomfortable part about Washburn. They were flagged 14 times for 126 yards. Two of their second-quarter touchdowns got brought back by holding penalties, and a would-be third touchdown in the third quarter to Tre Calhoun came off the board on an ineligible man downfield. The Bods basically played a full quarter of self-inflicted damage and still won on the road. That is not a knock on them. That is what a disciplined team looks like when the breaks go against them. They stay on schedule.

What people are saying

MIAA fans on d2football.com went into the Tussle split. The Emporia-side writeup laid out a side-by-side that read like a mirror: two of the best linebackers in the country, elite receivers, mobile quarterbacks, bend-but-don't-break defenses that had both finished in the top ten of the MIAA in yardage and in the top four in scoring. Another poster argued that Emporia at home, a week after the Maryville trip, would be a tough out for anybody. One more took Washburn on the bank-shot logic that both teams had just lost to Northwest. The home-after-a-loss instinct was the right one. The finish was not.

Our take

Here is our read. We did not lose this game at the line of scrimmage. 316 yards against the second-best scoring defense in the conference is not bad. 252 passing yards with no interceptions from Sarver is not bad. 1-for-4 on field goals is a lost game, and that is not revisionism. The final was 20-19.

Hot take, and we are going to say it plainly: the kicking game stops being a side conversation this week. If McCary is the guy for the postseason, then the room needs to know what the problem was from 32, from 37 and from 39, and we need to see that it got fixed in practice before Saturday. If he is not the guy, that call gets made now, not in the quarters. The idea of carrying a kicking question into a Super Region 4 game is the kind of thing that ends seasons, and we just showed everyone a tape of what it looks like.

The other one. Two losses in a row is a slump. Two losses in a row to the two best MIAA teams left on our schedule, in different ways, is a scouting report. Northwest ran us off the field. Washburn starved us of the ball and dared us to kick. Both exploited things that our 8-0 start had let us paper over, and we should say so honestly. That is more useful than pretending last week was a one-off; it was not. The margin on the Missouri Western and Central Oklahoma wins was never as wide as the record read.

Washburn did not out-play us Saturday. They out-lasted us, and we handed them the finish.

The playoff math is still there. The NCAA Division II Super Region 4 field takes eight teams, four of them automatic conference winners. At 8-2 we are still in the conversation, and the committee file does not care who you lost to, only how often and how close. But the next line on our file reads 19 points in a home loss, and the one above it reads 14 points in a road blowout. Two of those lines in the same month is how a seed slides.

Next up: at Fort Hays State, 2026-11-14

The regular-season finale, on the road, in Hays. A win and we are 9-2 heading into selection Sunday and almost certainly in the Super Region 4 bracket. A loss and the conversation gets a lot harder. Here is the marker we will hold next week to: if the kicking game gets four tries again, we have to convert at least three. Not should, not probably. Have to. Any team with a one-for-four kicking line in November does not play a second game in November.

And if you would rather back your reads than shout them, that is literally the game.