Falcons End 2010 on Winning Note

The Falcons picked up a nice win against UTSA last night in Anderson Arena.  Coach called it our best all-around performance of the year against a team that he feels is pretty good.  I do feel we are playing much better than we were over Thanksgiving, and the elements of the team are jelling together.  The crucible of conference play will be telling, but I am much more optimistic than I was, say, after the WKU loss.

The Falcons fell behind 8-2 right away, but the game tightened up for the rest of the first half, with UTSA scoring the last 4 points to head into the locker room down by 3.

The second half was a thing of beauty.  BG shot 60% for the second half and scored 40 points, a total we struggled to reach in some games this year.  BG went on a 14-3 run coming out of the locker room to go up by 14 points with 13 minutes left.  UTSA battled back and tied the game at 50, but the Falcons re-asserted control of the game.

In my view, that was the most important part of the game.  UTSA battled back, and the Falcons had every opportunity to fall apart or even to battle the game the reminder of the way.  What we did was get 7 straight points (built on 4 straight stops) and outscore UTSA 20-9 over the game's last 7 minutes or so.

College Basketball Stats

As you can see below, there were two key factors in the game.  First, BG forced a significant number of turnovers, which are possessions with no chance of scoring, and when UTSA did get a shot off, BG held them below their season efg% average.  Built on that is a really nice shooting game and that's how you can win.

College Basketball

BG had another strong night getting steals, which is really helping our defense.  We have struggled for a while on FG% and it just really helps that we are able to get possessions where there is no shot at all.  We had 12 steals and that is 17% of the possessions in the game.  Add in that we got at least 2-3 easy baskets off steals, and that is a big part of how we have been able to improve.



One nice thing about the win was that we won without any single guy having a great game, but a bunch of guys having good games.  For example:

• Scott Thomas, double-double 
• Cam Black, 8 points, 8 boards including some nice minutes in the 2nd half.
• Joe Jakubowski, team-high 13 points, 4/5 from 3.
• Dee Brown, 8 points and 6 boards and 3 steals.
• Jordan Crawford, 10 points on 5-7 shooting in 16 minutes.
• Torian Oglesby, one alley-oop slam and a bone-crunching foul on Hill

Coach mentioned in the post-game about our PG play.  This has been pretty critical to the offense as it has emerged.  Jakubowski had a slow start to the season, but his game has really come around.  He is our only senior, and he is playing really well of late.  He hit some really key shots last night, and is providing steady play.  Jordan Crawford is turning into a great change of pace guy.  He is very productive when he is on the floor and provides a whole different look.  When BG got off to the poor start and was having trouble getting anything going on offense against a very energetic UTSA defense, Crawford came in and broke the logjam by sticking a jumper.

One last note:  Devin Gibson, the UTSA point guard, is a really nice player.

So, the Falcons hop onto an airplane and head for St. Louis.  I'll have more on that coming up later, but that should be a good test for our improving team.