Good things do not happen when 20 football players and one coach crowd into a hotel elevator.

Bowling Green State’s football players learned that the hard way on Saturday, enduring their biggest scare of the day not at Kansas’ Memorial Stadium, where the Falcons claimed a 39-16 victory over KU, but at the Overland Park Marriott, where 21 bodies were stuck between the first and second floors en route to the fourth floor six hours before kickoff.

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“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my gosh, somebody will have to punch me or knock me out because I was gonna flip out,”’ BGSU linebacker Mitch Hewitt said of the afternoon mishap, which ended after 20 minutes when a maintenance worker used an override key to get the elevator back to the second floor, where the players took the stairs.

“It felt like we were in there an hour. I looked over at Greg Kupke. I thought his eyes were poppin’ out of his head,” added Hewitt, who scored a touchdown for the second straight week by falling on a Bill Whittemore fumble in the end zone.

Kupke, a 6-foot-3, 290-pounder, was one of several linemen on the elevator, which had a 3,500-pound capacity well exceeded by the Falcons.

“My gosh, that was hectic,” running back Joe Alls said after gaining a career-best 161 yards on 20 carries. He scored on an 11-yard run and also threw a 15-yard TD pass to quarterback Josh Harris off a trick play.

“I am claustrophobic. I’ve got 10 300-pound guys around me. I started sweating. I couldn’t breathe. I’m not using any elevators any more.”

The 3-0 Falcons, who beat Missouri by an identical 23-point margin last week, did not start sweating when they trailed 6-0 and 9-7 to the Jayhawks on Saturday.

Bowling Green gained 15 yards the first quarter and finished with 503 despite committing 12 penalties for 118 yards.

“We decided to calm down, slow the game down and go back to basics,” quarterback Harris said after gaining 98 yards on 15 carries and scored on runs of nine and two yards and also caught the TD pass from Alls. He also completed seven of 18 passes for 138 yards and one interception.

“Before everybody gets carried away and starts getting negative, including our coaches, this is a big win, a huge win, as big a win as we had last week (against Missouri),” said second-year coach Urban Meyer, who will soon become an Urban legend if his team continues its habit of beating schools in BCS conferences. BGSU is 5-0 against BCS teams.

“The stadium they were rocking and rolling early and they were stopping us and hitting us. They took the lead on us and we had to fight back.”

Meyer closed his locker room longer than usual after a road game, ordering his players to enjoy a victory in which the Falcons felt they didn’t play especially well.

“We go in the locker room and people are upset and had long faces. They don’t have ’em any more. We will enjoy this,” Meyer said. “We just came to Kansas and won by 23 points and yet we played terrible. We didn’t play well, but we won and we’re gonna enjoy the victory.”

Last week, BGSU piled 51 points on Missouri in a 51-28 victory back in Kentucky. The Falcons also beat Missouri last year.

“It will be a hectic game when those two square off,” Hewitt said. “Missouri’s quarterback is a little more athletic, but that quarterback Kansas had broke numerous tackles. They ran harder than I thought they would.”