After perfection through its first 12 games, football stood 60 minutes away from a second straight BCS bowl, but Bowling Green shattered NIU’s dream of crashing the party Friday at the MAC Championship.

The Huskies (12-1, 8-1 MAC) fell 47-27 to the Bowling Green Falcons (10-3, 8-1 MAC) Friday at Ford Field in Detroit. The loss snapped the Huskies’ streaks of 12 consecutive wins and 25 straight conference wins, and it ended any chances they had of busting the BCS for a second straight season.

“There wasn’t anything X- and O-wise I know that we hadn’t seen,” said head coach Rod Carey. “They executed it a little bit better than we defended it, and we had a couple mistakes in there. And then we made some coaching adjustments to kinda handle it. It was probably just too little too late.”

The Falcons came out strong on their first drive, as redshirt sophomore quarterback Matt Johnson found tight end Tyler Beck on a play-action rollout for a 28-yard, catch-and-run touchdown. NIU fell into a 7-0 hole and never held a lead the entire game.

The Huskies tied the game 7-7 when redshirt senior quarterback Jordan Lynch found redshirt sophomore wide receiver Juwan Brescacin for a 14-yard, one-handed touchdown grab. Bowling Green redshirt sophomore kicker Tyler Tate added a 26-yard field goal minutes later to put the Falcons ahead for good, 10-7.

The Falcons extended their lead to 17-7 on a 36-yard touchdown pass from Johnson to freshman wide receiver Ronnie Moore. The Huskies fought back with two Mathew Sims field goals, 51 yards and 45 yards, to pull as close as four points, 17-13.

Johnson tossed two more touchdown passes, 22 yards and 12 yards, before the intermission and had the Falcons leading 31-13 at the half. At the time, the 18 points was the biggest deficit the Huskies had faced all season.

“If we could get a lead in the first half — we’ve been a great second half team — we felt good about our ability to play with them,” said Bowling Green head coach Dave Clawson.