So, by virtue of winning Saturday, the Falcons will get to play one more game in Anderson Arena. With a win, they can make it back to the Q and line up with WMU. The MAC is wide open, and if you get hot now, who knows what will happen.
The opponent is NIU. BG played NIU during the "snow event" in February. BG went over a day early, spent way more time than anyone should in DeKalb, and then came out pretty flat (in front of an announced crowd of 465) against a Huskie team that was down 3 regulars due to injury and flu. NIU tied it with a 3 with :17 left, and BG could not get a good shot on our end to win. Then, Silas missed an in-and-out 3 that would have tied it at the end of OT to preserve BG's win.
BG was able to win by shooting just slightly better than NIU and creating some turnovers....on most measures, the under-manned Huskies, well, took the measure of BG. Neither team had a point per possession.
It was one of those, ugly, grinding wins.
It has been a long year in DeKalb. They are 9-20 and 5-11 in the MAC. They beat EMU and UT twice each, and have only one win that is not against one of those teams---they did beat Akron, which BG did not. Their RPI is 315 out of 345.
There is a lot of talk that their Coach will be sent packing after the season, and their best player, Xavier Silas, is injured and will not play against BGSU, according to a Monday teleconference comment from their coach.
This is not nothing. Silas is their own double figure scorer, and is the leading scorer in the MAC in conference games and 8th in the nation.
It doesn't get any better beyond that. Nate Rucker, their 3rd leading scorer, is questionable, and Bryan Hall, their assists leader, is reported to be out. Coach's son Michael Patton also has achilles tendon issues.
I can remember some years under DD with all the injuries, just limping home.
So, you'd like to think BG could win this one. But, strange things happen at tournament time, and the first game went into OT. It has to be won.
Tim Toler (who had the flu the first time BG played NIU) is picking up some slack for NIU. He had 17 and 10 in the regular season finale against Ball State. Tony Nixon added 11.
Despite a good game on the offensive boards, NIU was beaten in other categories.
It is hard to look at stats too much, because this is such a different group of players than the ones NIU had when most of the numbers were generated. If BG comes out with the energy it had on Saturday (tough to do, I know), this is a game they should win, especially with the injuries. I'd like to think that we would be highly favored even up, but with their injury issues, we should be able to win this game.
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