Men's Basketball Defeats Capital, but.......

BG opened the Men's Basketball Season with a game against the Capital Crusaders...just an exhibition game...but an inauspicious start to be sure.  BG won 71-56...which looks OK, but the Falcons led for only 11 minutes against a DIII team picked to finish 7th in their conference.  Capital led at halftime and the game was tied with 6:41 left.  A 17-2 run coming home sealed the deal.

Coach told The Blade that his players thought they were too "too cool" to rebound, which just sounds kind of funny.  And, in fact, BG was outrebounded 19-11 in the first half...which is tough to swallow against a team like that.

Anyway, as I recall the same thing happened last year...and in fact, BG had a tough season, so let's hope this doesn't become an overall trend.  The team is very, very young, as noted in the preview.

The starters were what Coach said they would be.  Wiggins, Alcegaire, Denny, Lillard and Ali.  Off the bench, Caldwell and Frye played the most minutes (Ali was in foul trouble), with Turner, Uju and Fox each getting 13 minutes.  Worrell was injured (expected back for the opener) so in the end those are 11 guys you would expect in the rotation. Hluchoweckyj played only 2 minutes.

Denny had 18 points on 5 of 10 shooting and 3 of 5 from beyond the arc.  Caldwell had 15 points on 5 of 9 shooting and 2 of 4 from 3fg, to go with 3 assists over 1 turnover.  Wiggins had 7 rebounds and Ali made all four of his FG attempts.

Anyway, not the way anyone wanted to start, but losing would have been worse.  Beyond trying to figure out a way that Mike Jinks is responsible, we'll we wait for the opener Friday.  The main takeaway here is that even if you think BG has things on the right trajectory, this could be a difficult season.  The most worrisome thing is that Coach talked about having to "coach effort" last season and it sounds like that was sort of a problem Friday, too.