MBB Western Carolina Preview

BG MBB opens the games that count tomorrow in Cullowhee, NC against Western Carolina.

BG has played Western Carolina three times.  The first time was the last year of the Dakich era at the Oneida Classic in Green Bay and the second was the very first game of the Orr era, at the Peggy Cronin classic, presumably in Cincinnati.  Both were losses to a team coached by MAC giant, the late Larry Hunter.  BG also played them at the Stroh right before Christmas in 2018, when Mark Prosser coached them.  BG won that one 73-52.  This is their first trip to Cullowhee.

Prosser has moved on to Winthrop and the Catamounts are now coached by Justin Grey who had been an assistant at Winthrop before Pat Kelsey went to College of Charleston, opening on the job Prosser took to open up the WCU job.

He will coach his first game as head coach Tuesday.  Grey played at Wake Forest and then 12-years in Europe, just as Huger did.

They play in the Southern Conference (#14) and had one decent year in recent memory.  They were 19-12 in 19-20, with a kenpom of 156.

They were 11-16 last year and finished 9th in the SoCon.  They return one starter and three letterwinners from that team, have essentially turned their roster over and are picked 10th (out of 10) by their own conference poll of coaches and the media, Blue Ribbon and kenpom.

In their exhibition game, they beat Campbellsville Harrodsburg by 44.  That's probably not too revealing.

Their starters were:

• Cameron Bacote, grad transfer from Indiana State, scored 17 in the game.  Before being a Sycamore, he played at Maryland Eastern Shore.  Averaged 2.7 PPG for Indiana State last year.
• Tyler Harris, the one returning starter....6.9 PPG last year, 4.6 RPG.
• Marlow Gilmore, JUCO transfer, 9.6 and 5.5 in JUCO.
• Nick Robinson, grad transfer from Valpo where he averaged 9.1 PPG and 3.6 RPG.
• Joe Petrakis, 6'10" transfer from K-state where he was not a contributor.

They also played:

• Marvin Price, who started at OU, went to JUCO, was JUCO All-American.
• Vonterious Woolbright, JUCO HM All-American
• Madison Monroe, started at Oakland, went to JUCO, averaged 14 a game there.

So, as will be the cast very often in the cm8ing years, this team is largely a mystery, especially with a new Coach.  ESPN's power index has BG with a 62% chance of winning and kenpom has it at 79%.

It will be great to get back to normal at the Stroh Friday!

Past and Future Opponent Land

Tennessee (5-4):  Against all odds, beats Kentucky

South Alabama (5-4) Lost to Troy

Murray State: (4-5):  Beat Tennessee Tech

Minnesota (6-3) Lost to Illinois

Kent (5-4) Beat NIU

Akron (2-7) Lost to Ball State, Fired Arth

NIU (6-3) Lost to Kent

EMU (5-3) Beat Toledo

UB (4-5) Idle

Toledo (4-5):  Lost to EMU

Miami (4-5): Lost to OU

Ohio (2-7):  Beat Miami

MAC vs. P5:  3-17 

MAC vs G5:  7-9

MAC vs. FCS:  10-1

East vs. West:  7-3, West

Williamson in portal

Myles Williamson is in the portal.  He's a CB who has played in 3 games this year.  He signed in the first full Loeffler class.  He's from Westerville and was a 2-star recruit in that class.

Best of luck to him.

He is one of 4 players listed on signing day who are not with the program.  When you scroll down the list you see a lot of guys who are playing right now.

MBB Update

 Two quick notes from MBB....

First, Samari Curtis had his waiver approved.  He will be eligible to play.  The former Mr. Basketball in Ohio will be able to play 2 seasons at BG.  He played 11 minutes in the exhibition game.

Oh, about that.  I'd suspect that it certainly wasn't the start BG was looking for.  The Falcons did eventually win in overtime, but even with :10 left in regulation victory was in doubt.  As I noted in my preview, Fairmont State is a strong DII team and no pushover, much as when we have good teams that play Big 10 teams.  Matiss, Fields and Fulcher did not play.

Still, it wasn't the result you'd like to see.  BG was great from 3FG (56%) but only 31% from 2FG.  BG had turnover issues (21%) in addition.  It was an 81-possession game, so BG finished with 1.12 points per possession and slightly less for Fairmont....a team with a proven ability to score.

One thing you worry about with BG is chemistry, which may take time to gel given the large number of new players.  99 of the 225 minutes were players new to the team.  This might be an ongoing feature of portal-land in the future.

It certainly was on Thursday.  We'll just have to keep an eye on how this develops.  Chemistry would appear to be an issue with the number of guys BG has who can play.  BG starts out on the road Tuesday.

Loeffler Presser

 Coach Loeffler's Presser was a TGIF version today, with the game coming up on Wednesday.  Just a couple things of note.

Davon Ferguson had surgery on Monday and is out for the season.  He is expected to return to BG next year, according to coach.  He's played a big part in whatever success the team has experienced this year and we wish him the best and hope for a healthy return.

Coach also talked about the issue with his ejection.  He reiterated that it was a learning experience for everyone involved, clearly meaning not just him.  He indicated satisfaction with how the league had handled the situation, indicating that there was some follow-up from the MAC.

Brief Fairmont State Preview

 So, BG opens the MBB season with an exhibition against Fairmont State tomorrow at the Stroh.  

Fairmont State is, first and foremost, the Falcons.  That doesn't happen too often.  What's weird is that their coach came from Notre Dame (not that one)   Further Falcon-oddness is the coach of the Fairmont Falcons coached at Notre Dame (not that one) the year before, so it was Falcon on Falcon.

Fairmont State is in Fairmont, WV and they are a high-level DII team.  They won their conference tourney last year (and one game in the NCAA Tourney) and they are ranked #22 in the DII rankings this year.

They were a big scoring team last year, #6 in DII.  They had two guys score 20 PPG, which is not something you see very often.  One of them, Dale Bonner, transferred to BAYLOR, who is the defending national champion.  The other is Isaiah Sanders, a 6'5" SR who is a very efficient scorer.  He shot 54% overall and 49.5% from 3FG.  He also made 90% of his FTs and averaged 6 RPG.

They also return Cole Vanhandorf, who scored 14 PPG and Zyon Dobbs, 11 PPG and 5 RPG.

BG played them in 2019 and the Falcons won by 22.  The Bowling Green Falcons.

A story in The Blade says that BG's health is coming around.  Huger didn't think Matiss would play, but he is practicing full court and is expected to be back.  Caleb Fields is also not expected to play, but he's also not expected to have a problem for the regular season.

MBB Preview

Well, here we go.

Let's catch up.  In 2019, BG played in (and lost the MAC title game to one of the best teams in the MAC in recent memory).  In 2020, BG was picked to win the MAC and was the #2 seed in the tournament.  And then it was cancelled.  In 2021, BG was picked to finish first again, finished 6th in the regular season and, with Justin Turner injured and barely able to play, BG led with 5 minutes left before a 12-2 Zip run closed the Falcons out.

I think it's safe to say that last season was disappointing.  Of course, with COVID it was weird and sucked...but the overall performance of the team (10-8 in MAC) was just not what we had hoped.  

Big picture, BG has 3 straight winning seasons for the first time since Dakich was here.  That's not great or everything we want, but it's something.  We need to be competitive every year to eventually eliminate 1968 and you need to be in it every year.

I'd say there are three things from last year that you can note as we return from last season.

First, Justin Turner left and was a first-round draft pick in the G-league, Westchester Knicks.  He is our all-time leading scorer and you saw how lost we were in the last two games when he was injured and unable to play effectively.

Second, is that the story improved considerably after that.  Daeqwon Plowden and Trey Diggs agreed to come back for one more season, which was huge.  It's a complete re-building year without that.  They join a strong set of returnees for BG...Kaden Metheny, Caleb Fields, Josiah Fulcher are all back, along with Cam Young and Chandler Turner.  That's actually a decent seven-man rotation.  Also, I understand we are expecting the healthy return of Matiss Kulackovskis...if so that's an 8-man rotation.  (Swingle left, along with Jacob Washington).

So, here's the third thing....Huger had 28% of the team's minutes come off the bench last year, which was below the national average of 31%.  At the same time, we had 10 players average 10 minutes or more per game, which is a relatively deep rotation.  (For comparison, the number was 7 for UT.

So the third thing is that BG did something they have not done previously...they went out and got 5 transfers.  That's a wow.  Obviously, with the changing winds of college basketball, that's going to be a trend moving forward...but in the meantime, it was a big move for the Falcons.

Here's who we have:

So, those are all guys who were in DI rotations and contributing...so now, we have 13 players capable of playing, including Kulackovskis.  (I am also not aware if Samari Curtis has his waiver to play).

Also, there is FR Ubong Abasi Etim, a 6'9" F with a 7-foot wingspan who played on a really good HS team in Arkansas.

So, the obvious question is, how are all these guys going to get minutes.  One possible answer would be for BG to amp up the tempo, especially without a traditional post player and play fast and pressure on both sides of the ball, which would lead to needing more guys overall.

We shall see if that happens, but it remains the single thing I wonder about with this team.

Blue Ribbon picked us #7 in the MAC and kenpom, which has traditionally hated us, has us #5.  Kenpom thinks we will go 19-11 and 12-8.

I would think 19 wins would be reasonable.  We have Ohio Wesleyan (DII) and Carlow (NAIA-lost 67 out of their last 69 games), as well as Western Carolina (#311), Chicago State (#357, usually the worst team in D1) and Norfolk State (#306) and Robert Morris (#284 in country).  BG play one P5-team...at Ohio State, and three other competitive games, Milwaukee (#119), Oakland (#193) and @Duquesne (#181).

As we all know, though, the real challenge is to win in March.  It's all that matters, if we want to forget 1968.  For my money, they are 7 teams in the MAC that could win it, with 6 of them from the former East Division.  BG needs to be gelled and using depth to its advantage.  I'm hopeful we have as good a shot by then as anyone to knock down the wins you need that weekend.