The Falcons opened 2012 the way they closed 2011, with a game in which they failed to take care of the ball on the road against a team that has had trouble defending the shot, and lost in overtime to a team they should have been able to beat.
UTSA led comfortably for most of the first half and led by 8 at the half. BG came out of the locker room and got some stops, and about 6 minutes in had a 12-4 run that had tied the game. From there, the 2nd half was very competitive, and the lead bounced back and forth. UTSA was up 1 with 2:16 left when Scott Thomas made a three after a game-long scoring drought. UTSA was fouled and made a free throw and then Crawford hit a jumper and BG was up 3 with 1:35 left.
As Todd Walker says, this is the kind of a situation where you need a "stop and a score" to win the game. Unfortunately, UTSA was able to get free and nail a 3 to tie the game with 1:13 left. BG had the ball, Thomas missed a 3, Oglesby had the rebound but turned it over trying to get the ball outside for another shot.
Big possession for UTSA with :27 left and BG does get the stop and calls time out. With :09 left, BG had time to set up a play to get a good shot. What was supposed to happen on this play? We may never know. But they can't have meant to do what they actually did, which was to have (based on Walker's description) Crawford slow-dribble the ball up, not do much, and then get an impossible stepback jumper at the buzzer.
We're supposedly an experienced team. I understand if the shot doesn't go down, but you gotta be able to get a good look in that situation.
So, on to overtime, where the collapse finished. UTSA scored the first 7 points and had a 7 point lead with 1:41 left, and then made 11-12 free throws in the last minute of the game to end up with the 7 point victory.
Before looking at team stats, there is one Falcon who deserves mention. Torian Oglesby had the best game of his career with 20 points and 13 rebounds. He set a school record by making all 10 of his shots, and set an NCAA record by making his 26th consecutive shot, a streak which is still in effect. I know all his shots are "zero footers" but there are hundreds of players like that in D1 and do you see them making 26 straight?
Apparently not.
So congratulations to Torian. This is the second game where BG had had a height advantage against a guard-oriented team, and while that has shown up in rebounding, I sometimes think that only Oglesby is really working to get open down low. Our other bigs certainly did not have productive games against UTSA.
Calhoun did have 13 points, but on 4 of 14 shooting, to go with 8 rebounds. Jordan Crawford had 16 points and 11 assists, many of them to Oglesby. Scott Thomas struggled to score, shooting 3 of 13 and 1 of 7 from 3, but had 10 rebounds.
From a team perspective, it was turnovers, 3FGs, and fouls that brought the team down. BG had 21 turnovers, which is about 26% of their possessions. Many of those turnovers occurred in the first half as BG simply could not get untracked. BG tried 26 3s, which is never a good sign for us, and made 8 of them. UTSA tried 17 and made a ridiculous 11. Then, UTSA made 23 free throws, and yes, I know 11 of them were in the last minute.
UTSA made only 14 turnovers, and those 7 extra possessions were a big difference.
Even with all those turnovers, BG ended up at .96 points per possession and UTSA ended up with 1.04 points per possession. UTSA actually shot 65% on 3FG and 37% on 2FG.
So, the Falcons finished their 5 game road swing at 1-4 and their pre-season schedule at 6-7, 5-7 in D1. I'm going to do a post later in the week where I take stock of where we are entering the MAC season. It will be nice to play at home...even if the red-hot Ohio U Bobcats are the opponent.
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