MUNCIE – Consider Stan Parrish’s melon uncontused, and the bogeyman dead. The Three Horsemen saved one, and slew the other.

Their given names are Eric Williams, Cory Sykes and MiQuale Lewis, and when they were finished battering and confounding and slip-sliding away Thursday night, Ball State had 243 rushing yards and 328 in all, and FCS (formerly Division I-AA) Southeast Missouri State had been sent down the road, 27-10, on an opening night at Scheumann Stadium that stabbed the bogeyman of last year’s opening night in the heart.

That one was a 20-10 loss to North Texas, a defeat that began an 0-7 mudslide that became a 2-10 avalanche. This one was 7-7 at halftime and headed that way until Parrish reminded his Cardinals how badly none of them wanted to go that way again.

“It was basically this,” Parrish said of his halftime chat. “If we are going in the right direction, we’ve got to do it now. We’ve got to do it now.”

And so they did, putting the game in their pocket with a 17-point third quarter in which Williams (105 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries), Sykes (70 yards and two scores on 14 carries) and Lewis (42 yards on 13 carries) took command of the game, the defense forced a fumble to set up a score and Briggs Orsbon blocked a punt to set up another.

“It was just what we needed,” Parrish said. “It was everything … because I’m not sure last year at halftime we’d have mustered that up.”

And that business about Parrish’s noggin?

“I told our assistants during the week, ‘Hit me over the head if you have to, but make me keep running the ball,’ ” he said.

Williams, Sykes and Lewis obliged, coming at Southeast Missouri from the promised smorgasbord of sets: lined up deep behind Page, lined up in the wildcat formation, even lined up at wide receiver on occasion.

“We only had one thing on our mind, and that’s ‘downhill,’ ” Williams said. “The whole time on the sidelines, and when we came in at halftime, we said, ‘We’re gonna continue to run it downhill, and one of us is gonna pop. One of us is gonna pop.’ ”

After a sluggish first half in which the Cardinals and Redhawks matched opening book-length scoring drives – Ball State’s an 11-play, 62-yard drive and Southeast Missouri’s a 10-play, 73-yard drive – the Cardinals opened the third quarter with a nine-play, 52-yard drive that ended in a Williams score. Then they immediately got the ball back when defensive back Charlie Todd blasted the football loose and defensive end Robert Eddins plucked a fumble out of the air at the Southeast Missouri 39.

Eight plays later, Sykes skimmed 12 yards over the left side to make it 21-7.

Four plays after that, Orsbon stuffed the punt to set the Cardinals up again, this time at the 12.

Seven plays after that, Ian McGarvey came on to make it 24-7 with a 29-yard field goal.

“We kept wearing them down, and you could see the fatigue in their bodies,” Williams said. “We just kept pounding and sticking to our game and that was running the ball straight downhill.”

bensmith@jg.net