Saturday, February 24, 2007

Falcons Fight good fight, lose #16

Bowling Green fought really hard tonight, and were in the game in the last couple of minutes. It was a tough nice to be the road team. With more than 5,000 people at the JAR, where the seniors celebrating their last game had only lost six times in four seasons, it was a tough road environment. And they were jacked up.

We fell down by 17 early in the second half, and it started to look like we were dead meat. Morde. Based on what happened against OU the other night, that is exactly what I expected. Rather, in fact, our guys fought back. We eventually tied the game, and were it not for two unforced turnovers in the last couple minutes, we had a shot to win the game.

We have to shoot well to compete, and (obviously, based on the score) we had 12 3's (MAC season high for us), and we shot 49%.

Still, it was a loss. We will have a losing season. We have now lost 17 of our last 19 MAC games, and that is our 13th straight road loss (this streak will continue into next season, since our road year is done in the MAC. Yes, we were 0-for-the-road).

You know, there's always the next game. It is part of what makes sports so addicting. If you want this line of thinking, this team battled back and competed in a very tough venue. Kent is in BG on Thursday. If we can compete @ Akron, we should be able to beat Kent at AA.

Of course, Kent won @ OU today. And, since they are in a dogfight for the East title, they will bring every single thing they have.

Tonight, we committed a mind boggling 34 fouls, and Akron shot 54 (I shit you not) Free Throws. Luckily, they failed to hit 60%--keeping us in the game. On the offensive side, Martin had 25 points, but he's almost gone. The best thing was Hamblet with 20 and Miller with 18. They'll both be back next year. Todd Walker said that Hamblet has shot better since he moved off the point, and that's good, because next year's team will need a scorer.

Moten and Clements also gave us good minutes.

(Update: I see in The Blade this am that Erik Marschall didn't play after early in the game due to a knee injury, so that limited our available post people. Romeo Travis had 37 points and 11 boards, including 10-13 shooting from the field and a ridiculous 16 free throws.)

So, on to Kent. Tonight's loss was not especially discouraging, but we have grown largely immune to the defeats in the 2007 part of the schedule.

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