Sunday, January 03, 2016

Falcons Get Easy Win Over Oakland City University

BG won its final MAC tune-up, cruising past the Might Oaks of Oakland City University 87-56.  BG started pretty flat, and while the outcome of the game was never in doubt, BG had only a modest lead for much of it against a team that had been blown out in its previous D1 games.  BG was only up 8 with 2 minutes left in the first half (and OCU had the ball), but BG got the stop and finish on a 7-0 run to lead by 15 at the half.  The Oaks came out in the second half and cut the lead by to 11 five minutes into the half.

From there, BG then scored the next 19 points over 7 minutes to lead by 30 with about 9 minutes left.

The big lead let BG get some everybody into the lineup, with 13 players in the game and all of them scoring at least 1 point.

Zack Denny had a 15/10 double-double in 26 minutes.  Antwon Lillard had a good game, too, scoring 14 points on 6 of 7 shooting and he added 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 0 turnovers.  Ismail Ali also had 10 rebounds.

BG had a huge rebounding advantage, with a 50-31 differential.  BG made 54% of its 2FGs, which was a big difference in the game.

OCU has some very solid players and it isn't surprising they are undefeated in D2 games.  They were just over-matched on size against BG.  The Falcons were able to get the ball inside for baskets and, as noted, the rebounding was very one-sided.

So that is that.  BG finishes at 9-4 in the pre-season.  The true test begins Wednesday.

Two last things...there was a nice crowd for the game, by our current standards.  The official report was about 1,900, for a holiday game with an unknown opponent, that was pretty good.

The last thing...John Wagner of The Blade said on twitter that BG hadn't planned to play this game and had scheduled Texas-Rio Grande Valley...who are coached by former Falcon Dan Hipsher.  Unfortunately, they cancelled the game late, and BG had to take who it could get for this one.  It was nobody's first choice...sometimes you have to make do.  Bring on the RedHawks.


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