TOLEDO, Ohio — Four teams, two weeks, two tickets to Detroit. The Mid-American Conference race tightened into a four-way tie for first place Wednesday night, and the Toledo Rockets — 8-2 overall and 5-1 in the MAC — can see the whole path in front of them: beat Bowling Green in the Battle of I-75, then win a regular-season finale at Ohio that is shaping up as a playoff game in everything but name.
Toledo kept its share of first place Wednesday with a 24-0 shutout of Massachusetts at the Glass Bowl, according to the University of Toledo’s official game recap. The Rockets did all of their scoring in the first half, opening with Connor Walendzak’s 69-yard touchdown run in the first quarter and exploding for 17 more points in the second, capped by Walendzak’s 17-yard touchdown catch and Nicholas Thompson’s 62-yard interception return for a touchdown.
Walendzak, back from injury, ran for a career-high 117 yards on 14 carries and caught three passes for 41 yards, UToledo Athletics reported, while CJ Miller added 83 rushing yards and Adjatay Dabbs caught seven passes for a season-high 144 yards. Quarterback John Alan Richter completed 13 of 22 passes for 197 yards and a touchdown. The defense never let UMass reach the red zone, piled up 10 tackles for loss and three sacks, and held the Minutemen to 67 rushing yards — the second straight week Toledo has finished with double-digit tackles for loss. It is the first time the Rockets have posted shutouts in back-to-back seasons since 1992-93, according to the school.
We covered the shutout as it happened in our recap of Toledo’s 24-0 win over UMass at the Glass Bowl, and the stakes were already clear beforehand in our preview of the Rockets’ midweek test. What Wednesday’s results across the league did was make the math both simpler and crueler: Buffalo, Ohio and Western Michigan all sit at 5-1 alongside Toledo, with Miami (Ohio) one game back at 4-2, according to the conference standings published by Heavy.
The tiebreakers are where it gets complicated. For a two-team tie, the MAC goes first to the head-to-head result, then to win percentage against common opponents, then to strength of schedule and an analytics rating before any draw, Heavy’s standings explainer reported. For a multi-team tie, combined head-to-head record among the tied teams comes first. Toledo holds one valuable card — a win over Western Michigan — and one bad one, a loss to Buffalo, both of them teams in the 5-1 knot, according to By The Belt’s recap of Wednesday’s games.
That is why the finale looms so large. Ohio, the fourth co-leader, hosts Ball State next week and then hosts Toledo on Black Friday in a game Heavy expects to carry enormous meaning — a potential winner-takes-a-championship-berth showdown at Peden Stadium. A Toledo win there would hand the Rockets the head-to-head edge over the Bobcats at exactly the moment the standings need untangling.
Before any of that, though, comes the rivalry. Toledo closes its 2026 home schedule on Friday, Nov. 20, when the Rockets host Bowling Green in the 91st edition of the Battle of I-75 at the Glass Bowl, UToledo Athletics announced. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m., the game will be televised nationally on ESPN2, and it is a game Toledo cannot afford to treat as a tune-up: Bowling Green would like nothing more than to wreck its rival’s title path, and a slip at home would leave the Rockets needing help everywhere else.
The other contenders’ roads differ. Western Michigan does not play any of the other 5-1 teams the rest of the way, closing against Eastern Michigan and then Miami, which is lurking a game back, according to Heavy. Buffalo closes with Central Michigan and last-place Akron, two games the Bulls will feel they should win. Ohio’s road runs through Ball State and the Toledo finale. In other words, the logjam may not break at all until the final Friday — every co-leader could plausibly arrive at the last weekend still tied.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on. Confirmed: Toledo is 8-2, tied atop the MAC at 5-1 with Buffalo, Ohio and Western Michigan, holds the head-to-head edge on Western Michigan and trails it against Buffalo, and finishes with Bowling Green at home and Ohio on the road. Still to be decided: every result in the league over the next two weeks, and with them, which two teams earn the trip to the MAC Championship Game in Detroit.
What happens next starts Tuesday and Wednesday, when the league’s other contenders play their penultimate games, and continues Friday, Nov. 20 at the Glass Bowl. For Toledo, the formula does not require a standings app: win the Battle of I-75, win at Ohio, and the road to Detroit runs exactly where the Rockets want it — through their own results, not somebody else’s.
Photo: Mactropy, CC BY-SA