Friday, March 11
Cleveland, Ohio
12:00 PM
Bowling Green State University
80
vs
72
Central Michigan (Semifinals)
Senior Lauren Prochaska drives past CMU's Shonda Long during Friday's win at The Q (Brad Phalin photo)
Falcons Top Central, 80-72, to Advance to Championship Game
March 11, 2011 | Women's Basketball
BGSU takes lead for good with 12-0 second-half run
The Bowling Green State University women's basketball team went on a 12-0 second-half run, taking the lead for good in an 80-72 win over Central Michigan University Friday afternoon (March 11). The Mid-American Conference Tournament semifinal-round game was held at Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland.
FINAL STATS - HTML | BOXSCORE - PDF
POSTGAME AUDIO: Curt Miller, Lauren Prochaska & Chelsea Albert
BGSU-CMU PHOTO GALLERY
BGSU NOTES FOR SATURDAY'S EASTERN MICHIGAN GAME | EMU'S NOTES
With the victory, the Falcons improve to 27-4 on the season, and BGSU advances to the tourney's championship game for the third-straight March and the seventh time in the last eight years. BG will face Eastern Michigan, a 61-55 winner over Toledo in Friday's second game.
CMU bows out of the MAC Tournament with an overall record of 20-10.
Seniors Tracy Pontius and Lauren Prochaska combined for 34 points as four BGSU starters scored in double figures. Pontius had a team-leading 18 points, while Prochaska's 16 included the first five points during the 12-0 run early in the second period. Her three-pointer with 15:49 left in the game erased a 45-43 CMU advantage and gave the Falcons the lead for good.
Pontius hit a dagger of a three-point shot with 3:08 on the clock. With the Falcons' lead down to five, BG misfired on a long-range attempt. Senior Jen Uhl came up with the rebound and flipped the ball to an open Pontius at the right elbow, in front of the BG bench.
Pontius, who was unguarded, paused momentarily, as if considering the possibility of pulling the ball out and using some of the shot clock. Ultimately, though, she fired a shot -- perhaps over the objections of the coaching staff seated directly behind her -- that hit nothing but net, giving BG a 75-67 lead. Prochaska followed with a pair of free throws, and BG's lead did not fall under double digits again until fewer than 10 seconds remained in the game.
Uhl had 12 points for the Brown and Orange, while sophomore Chrissy Steffen added 10. BGSU's four players off the bench -- senior Chelsea Albert, junior Jessica Slagle, redshirt sophomore Danielle Havel and freshman Jill Stein -- combined to make 8-of-9 shots from the field. The BGSU bench outscored their CMU counterparts by a 20-12 margin.
Albert was a perfect 3-for-3 from the field on the day. She had six points, five rebounds and a game-high two blocked shots in a season-most 26 minutes of work off the bench.
Kaihla Szunko had a monster game to lead the Chippewa cause. Szunko had a double-double before halftime, and finished with 23 points and 19 rebounds. Ten of those boards came at the offensive end.
For their part, however, the Falcons used a team effort to outrebound the Chippewas by a 45-44 count. Prochaska led the way with eight, while Steffen had seven rebounds and Uhl six.
Defensively, Prochaska drew the assignment on Shonda Long, and held the CMU shooter to just six points. Long had scored a school-record 40 points in the Chippewas' win over Buffalo in the quarterfinal round.
Like the teams' regular-season meeting (a 90-62 BGSU win at Anderson Arena on Jan. 22), the game was played at a high tempo from the outset. After senior Maggie Hennegan blocked a shot by Long on the game's first possession, Prochaska got the Falcons on the board with a driving one-hander.
CMU scored the next four points, but Uhl hit a three-pointer from the top of the key to give the Falcons a 5-4 lead. Brandie Baker countered with a steal and a coast-to-coast layup, but Steffen connected on a triple try from the right wing. Two Prochaska free throws gave the Falcons a 10-6 lead with exactly three minutes gone.
Szunko rebounded her own miss and laid the ball back up and in, but Uhl's second three-pointer of the day put the Falcons up by a 13-8 score at the 16:41 mark. The track meet continued, as Szunko canned a jumper, but Steffen converted a driving layup. With less than four minutes elapsed, BGSU's lead was 15-10.
Soon after entering the game for the first time, Slagle took a cross-court pass from Steffen and knocked down a three-pointer. Then, Havel drove the lane and dished a sweet bounce pass to Stein for an easy layup. The BGSU run was 7-0, and the Falcons' lead was 20-10.
A Szunko layup ended that run, but Steffen drove right down Main Street, laying the ball off the glass and in for a 22-12 advantage with 12:41 left before halftime. Two more Szunko layups, however, cut BG's lead to six points.
The teams traded layups before Pontius hit a pair of three-pointers on back-to-back possessions for the Falcons. First, she dribbled around the top of the arc and nailed a shot with 9:06 on the clock. Then, after CMU misfired on a pair of shots at the other end, Pontius took a pass from Steffen and hit a right-elbow triple try from well beyond the three-point line. BGSU's lead was 12 points, 30-18, as CMU took a timeout. The Falcons were shooting 68.8% from the field (11-of-16) at that point.
Back came the Chippewas, however, as Taylor Johnson made a pair of free throws before Niki DiGuilio drained back-to-back three-point tries of her own. DiGuilio's second trey in that span came from the left corner with Central running in transition, cutting BG's lead to 30-26 and prompting a BGSU timeout with 5:12 on the clock.
Out of the timeout, Albert converted an 'and-one' layup, drawing Szunko's second foul of the day. The free throw did not drop, but BG had a 32-26 lead.
Moments later, however, CMU got a steal deep in BG's end, and converted that turnover into points. And, another Szunko layup got the Chippewas within two points with 3:25 on the clock.
Steffen answered with another trip down Main Street for an easy layup, snapping Central's 12-2 run, and Albert responded to Brandie Baker's putback with a layup of her own. A few minutes later, Baker got a crazy layup try to drop, but Havel took a Pontius pass and knocked down a layup of her own while being fouled. The free throw was no good, and one more Szunko layup cut BG's advantage to 39-36 at the intermission. A Steffen layup with just 1.9 seconds left was waved off as an offensive foul was called on the Falcons.
Szunko had 14 points and 14 rebounds in the first half alone.
Uhl scored the first two points of the second period, taking a pass from Steffen for an easy layup, but the Chippewas scored the next five points to tie the score. Long was fouled shooting a three-pointer and made two of her three free throws. Then, DiGuilio got free for a trey with 18:16 on the clock.
Hennegan drew Skylar Miller's fourth foul of the day less than half a minute later, went to the line and hit both of her shots. But, Steffen and Hennegan each picked up foul number three within three seconds of one another. A minute later, Johnson's three-point shot gave the Chippewas a 44-43 lead.
Szunko split two tosses with 16:03 remaining, before Prochaska answered with her three-pointer from straightaway center that gave BG the lead for good.
After that shot, the Falcons forced a CMU miss, and Prochaska rebounded the ball. On BG's ensuing possession, Prochaska drove the lane and was hammered. After a media timeout, the Falcon senior made two throws for a 48-45 lead. BG forced another missed shot, and Prochaska fed Uhl for an easy layup. When Albert took a pass from Slagle and threw in a one-handed shot from the right side, the Falcons led by seven and the Chippewas took a timeout with 14:19 remaining.
The timeout did not slow the Falcons' momentum, however. Pontius made a free throw, then hit a jumper in the paint with BG running, and the lead was 10 points at 55-45. The teams traded hoops before the Brown and Orange put together a 6-0 run to take a game-high 14-point lead.
That run began with Havel's pull-up jumper with the shot clock winding down. Uhl tied up Szunko, with the ball going back to BGSU on the alternating possession, and the senior then took Prochaska's entry pass and hit a layup. When Slagle drove the lane, drew a foul on Szunko and hit two tosses, BG's lead was 63-49 with 10:13 remaining.
DiGuilio stopped a 20-4 BG run with a three-pointer, and Miller's layup but the Falcon lead to single digits at 63-54. But, Prochaska made a pair of free throws, and a Pontius jumper upped the lead to 13 points with under eight minutes to go.
Szunko converted yet another layup, but Havel slipped out to the left corner, waited for Prochaska to drive and kick the ball out to her, then knocked down a triple try for a 70-56 lead with 6:17 to go.
Central was not done yet, scoring the next nine points to get within five. Two Johnson free throws made it a 70-65 game with 4:21 on the clock. Hennegan hit two tosses of her own out of the 3:54 media timeout, and after a Szunko fourth-chance layup, Pontius hit her killer trey for a 75-67 lead.
Then, the Chippewas were called for a foul, and Prochaska hit two shots from the stripe to give her team a 10-point advantage. Over the next minute and a half, Central missed three shots from the floor and two from the line, and Prochaska made two more tosses with 1:22 left. Brandie Baker scored five points in the final 30 seconds, but it was too little, too late.
The Falcons shot 45.5% from the field for the game, and BG went 9-of-25 from three-point land. Six different players hit long-range shots, with Pontius making three and Uhl two.
At the other end, BG held CMU to just a 33.3% field-goal rate, as the Chippewas attempted 78 shots on the day. Central did make seven triples in 22 tries.
BG's four double-digit scorers each had at least three assists, with Steffen dishing out four and Pontius, Prochaska and Uhl three apiece. Albert and Pontius each had two blocked shots.
Brandie Baker had 15 points, seven rebounds, four assists and a game-high four steals for the Chippewas, while DiGuilio and Johnson scored 12 points each.
Saturday's championship game will begin at 1:00 p.m. at Quicken Loans Arena, and will be televised by SportsTime Ohio, Comcast Michigan and ESPN Full Court. It will also be available online via ESPN3.com.
FINAL STATS - HTML | BOXSCORE - PDF
POSTGAME AUDIO: Curt Miller, Lauren Prochaska & Chelsea Albert
BGSU-CMU PHOTO GALLERY
BGSU NOTES FOR SATURDAY'S EASTERN MICHIGAN GAME | EMU'S NOTES
With the victory, the Falcons improve to 27-4 on the season, and BGSU advances to the tourney's championship game for the third-straight March and the seventh time in the last eight years. BG will face Eastern Michigan, a 61-55 winner over Toledo in Friday's second game.
CMU bows out of the MAC Tournament with an overall record of 20-10.
Seniors Tracy Pontius and Lauren Prochaska combined for 34 points as four BGSU starters scored in double figures. Pontius had a team-leading 18 points, while Prochaska's 16 included the first five points during the 12-0 run early in the second period. Her three-pointer with 15:49 left in the game erased a 45-43 CMU advantage and gave the Falcons the lead for good.
Pontius hit a dagger of a three-point shot with 3:08 on the clock. With the Falcons' lead down to five, BG misfired on a long-range attempt. Senior Jen Uhl came up with the rebound and flipped the ball to an open Pontius at the right elbow, in front of the BG bench.
Pontius, who was unguarded, paused momentarily, as if considering the possibility of pulling the ball out and using some of the shot clock. Ultimately, though, she fired a shot -- perhaps over the objections of the coaching staff seated directly behind her -- that hit nothing but net, giving BG a 75-67 lead. Prochaska followed with a pair of free throws, and BG's lead did not fall under double digits again until fewer than 10 seconds remained in the game.
Uhl had 12 points for the Brown and Orange, while sophomore Chrissy Steffen added 10. BGSU's four players off the bench -- senior Chelsea Albert, junior Jessica Slagle, redshirt sophomore Danielle Havel and freshman Jill Stein -- combined to make 8-of-9 shots from the field. The BGSU bench outscored their CMU counterparts by a 20-12 margin.
Albert was a perfect 3-for-3 from the field on the day. She had six points, five rebounds and a game-high two blocked shots in a season-most 26 minutes of work off the bench.
Kaihla Szunko had a monster game to lead the Chippewa cause. Szunko had a double-double before halftime, and finished with 23 points and 19 rebounds. Ten of those boards came at the offensive end.
For their part, however, the Falcons used a team effort to outrebound the Chippewas by a 45-44 count. Prochaska led the way with eight, while Steffen had seven rebounds and Uhl six.
Defensively, Prochaska drew the assignment on Shonda Long, and held the CMU shooter to just six points. Long had scored a school-record 40 points in the Chippewas' win over Buffalo in the quarterfinal round.
Like the teams' regular-season meeting (a 90-62 BGSU win at Anderson Arena on Jan. 22), the game was played at a high tempo from the outset. After senior Maggie Hennegan blocked a shot by Long on the game's first possession, Prochaska got the Falcons on the board with a driving one-hander.
CMU scored the next four points, but Uhl hit a three-pointer from the top of the key to give the Falcons a 5-4 lead. Brandie Baker countered with a steal and a coast-to-coast layup, but Steffen connected on a triple try from the right wing. Two Prochaska free throws gave the Falcons a 10-6 lead with exactly three minutes gone.
Szunko rebounded her own miss and laid the ball back up and in, but Uhl's second three-pointer of the day put the Falcons up by a 13-8 score at the 16:41 mark. The track meet continued, as Szunko canned a jumper, but Steffen converted a driving layup. With less than four minutes elapsed, BGSU's lead was 15-10.
Soon after entering the game for the first time, Slagle took a cross-court pass from Steffen and knocked down a three-pointer. Then, Havel drove the lane and dished a sweet bounce pass to Stein for an easy layup. The BGSU run was 7-0, and the Falcons' lead was 20-10.
A Szunko layup ended that run, but Steffen drove right down Main Street, laying the ball off the glass and in for a 22-12 advantage with 12:41 left before halftime. Two more Szunko layups, however, cut BG's lead to six points.
The teams traded layups before Pontius hit a pair of three-pointers on back-to-back possessions for the Falcons. First, she dribbled around the top of the arc and nailed a shot with 9:06 on the clock. Then, after CMU misfired on a pair of shots at the other end, Pontius took a pass from Steffen and hit a right-elbow triple try from well beyond the three-point line. BGSU's lead was 12 points, 30-18, as CMU took a timeout. The Falcons were shooting 68.8% from the field (11-of-16) at that point.
Back came the Chippewas, however, as Taylor Johnson made a pair of free throws before Niki DiGuilio drained back-to-back three-point tries of her own. DiGuilio's second trey in that span came from the left corner with Central running in transition, cutting BG's lead to 30-26 and prompting a BGSU timeout with 5:12 on the clock.
Out of the timeout, Albert converted an 'and-one' layup, drawing Szunko's second foul of the day. The free throw did not drop, but BG had a 32-26 lead.
Moments later, however, CMU got a steal deep in BG's end, and converted that turnover into points. And, another Szunko layup got the Chippewas within two points with 3:25 on the clock.
Steffen answered with another trip down Main Street for an easy layup, snapping Central's 12-2 run, and Albert responded to Brandie Baker's putback with a layup of her own. A few minutes later, Baker got a crazy layup try to drop, but Havel took a Pontius pass and knocked down a layup of her own while being fouled. The free throw was no good, and one more Szunko layup cut BG's advantage to 39-36 at the intermission. A Steffen layup with just 1.9 seconds left was waved off as an offensive foul was called on the Falcons.
Szunko had 14 points and 14 rebounds in the first half alone.
Uhl scored the first two points of the second period, taking a pass from Steffen for an easy layup, but the Chippewas scored the next five points to tie the score. Long was fouled shooting a three-pointer and made two of her three free throws. Then, DiGuilio got free for a trey with 18:16 on the clock.
Hennegan drew Skylar Miller's fourth foul of the day less than half a minute later, went to the line and hit both of her shots. But, Steffen and Hennegan each picked up foul number three within three seconds of one another. A minute later, Johnson's three-point shot gave the Chippewas a 44-43 lead.
Szunko split two tosses with 16:03 remaining, before Prochaska answered with her three-pointer from straightaway center that gave BG the lead for good.
After that shot, the Falcons forced a CMU miss, and Prochaska rebounded the ball. On BG's ensuing possession, Prochaska drove the lane and was hammered. After a media timeout, the Falcon senior made two throws for a 48-45 lead. BG forced another missed shot, and Prochaska fed Uhl for an easy layup. When Albert took a pass from Slagle and threw in a one-handed shot from the right side, the Falcons led by seven and the Chippewas took a timeout with 14:19 remaining.
The timeout did not slow the Falcons' momentum, however. Pontius made a free throw, then hit a jumper in the paint with BG running, and the lead was 10 points at 55-45. The teams traded hoops before the Brown and Orange put together a 6-0 run to take a game-high 14-point lead.
That run began with Havel's pull-up jumper with the shot clock winding down. Uhl tied up Szunko, with the ball going back to BGSU on the alternating possession, and the senior then took Prochaska's entry pass and hit a layup. When Slagle drove the lane, drew a foul on Szunko and hit two tosses, BG's lead was 63-49 with 10:13 remaining.
DiGuilio stopped a 20-4 BG run with a three-pointer, and Miller's layup but the Falcon lead to single digits at 63-54. But, Prochaska made a pair of free throws, and a Pontius jumper upped the lead to 13 points with under eight minutes to go.
Szunko converted yet another layup, but Havel slipped out to the left corner, waited for Prochaska to drive and kick the ball out to her, then knocked down a triple try for a 70-56 lead with 6:17 to go.
Central was not done yet, scoring the next nine points to get within five. Two Johnson free throws made it a 70-65 game with 4:21 on the clock. Hennegan hit two tosses of her own out of the 3:54 media timeout, and after a Szunko fourth-chance layup, Pontius hit her killer trey for a 75-67 lead.
Then, the Chippewas were called for a foul, and Prochaska hit two shots from the stripe to give her team a 10-point advantage. Over the next minute and a half, Central missed three shots from the floor and two from the line, and Prochaska made two more tosses with 1:22 left. Brandie Baker scored five points in the final 30 seconds, but it was too little, too late.
The Falcons shot 45.5% from the field for the game, and BG went 9-of-25 from three-point land. Six different players hit long-range shots, with Pontius making three and Uhl two.
At the other end, BG held CMU to just a 33.3% field-goal rate, as the Chippewas attempted 78 shots on the day. Central did make seven triples in 22 tries.
BG's four double-digit scorers each had at least three assists, with Steffen dishing out four and Pontius, Prochaska and Uhl three apiece. Albert and Pontius each had two blocked shots.
Brandie Baker had 15 points, seven rebounds, four assists and a game-high four steals for the Chippewas, while DiGuilio and Johnson scored 12 points each.
Saturday's championship game will begin at 1:00 p.m. at Quicken Loans Arena, and will be televised by SportsTime Ohio, Comcast Michigan and ESPN Full Court. It will also be available online via ESPN3.com.
Amy Velasco, Lexi Fleming, & Coach Chmiel Postgame Interview (Mar. 5, 2025)
Thursday, March 06
Paige Kohler, Coach Chmiel, & Amy Velasco Postgame Interview (Feb. 26, 2025)
Thursday, February 27
In the Paint: Lexxus Graham-Blincoe
Wednesday, February 26
Erika Porter, Amy Velasco, & Coach Chmiel Postgame Interview (Feb. 22, 2025)
Sunday, February 23