Sunday, January 13, 2019

Some superlatives on MBB

There are a lot of superlatives and strong comparables for the BG MBB team.  These are all drawn from BGSUFalcons.com, with some editing and massaging by me.

On a team basis:

  • For the first time in school history, Bowling Green has started Mid-American Conference play with three-straight wins by double figures.
  • The Falcons are 3-0 in MAC play for the first time since 2004-05.
  • Bowling Green has won seven-straight games by 10-plus points for the first time since 1947-48.
  • Bowling Green has won seven-straight games for the first time since 2001-02. The seven-game winning streak sets a Michael Huger Era high.
  • Bowling Green is on its first three-game MAC winning streak since 2016-17, having won three-consecutive MAC games by double digits for the first time since 2001-02.
  • The Orange and Brown are 2-0 in MAC road games, marking the first time that has happened since head coach Michael Huger's debut season in 2015-16. BGSU has already matched the amount of MAC road wins it had all of last season.

Individual:

  • For the third time in his career and first time this season, redshirt-sophomore guard Justin Turner scored 30-plus points. He's the first BGSU sophomore to get 30 in 15 years.
  • Turner eclipsed 800 points on the night, as he's now scored 821 points in just 51 games.
  • Antwon Lillard is just 113 points shy of 1,000 for his career.
  • Senior forward Demajeo Wiggins added eight points and a game-high 16 rebounds. Wiggins moved to third all-time in rebounds at BGSU, surpassing Len Matela, who racked up 890 rebounds as a Falcon from 1998-2002. Wiggins now has 899 rebounds for his career, and sits behind a couple of BGSU legends in Nate Thurmond (1,295 rebounds | 1961-63) and Cornelius Cash (1,068 | 1973-75).

A quick riff on that last number.  Wiggins is 169 rebounds short of catching Cash.  There are 15 regular season games left.  There's at least one MAC tournament game left, and let's hope for more.  So, with the minimum number of games, he'd need 10.5 per game to reach #2.  If BG were to play 20 more games--and that's possible--he'd only need 8.5.  So, all in all, that's doable but will require him to continue to produce at the conference-leading pace he has established.

Anyway, all this just underscores the level at which BG is playing right now compared to our admittedly sub-par performance since the WVU debacle.  (Correlation is not causation).  It is what we asked for--for the program to make some progress toward being competitive.  And we're getting it.

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