Bowling Green State University Athletics
BGSU Opens 2004 Season With This Weekend's Falcon Classic
August 24, 2004 | Women's Soccer
Aug. 24, 2004
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BOWLING GREEN, Ohio - The Bowling Green State University women's soccer team will begin the eighth season in program history with a pair of home matches this weekend ... the Falcons of head coach Andy Richards will host the Falcon Classic at Cochrane Field this Friday and Sunday (Aug. 27 and 29) ... BGSU will play a pair of teams from Pennsylvania, Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh ... Mid-American Conference member Eastern Michigan University rounds out the four-team field ... the complete schedule follows ...
FALCON CLASSIC (matches played at Cochrane Field) Friday, August 27 Eastern Michigan vs. Pittsburgh, 1:00 p.m. Duquesne at Bowling Green, 4:00 p.m. Sunday, August 29 Duquesne vs. Eastern Michigan, 11:00 a.m. Pittsburgh at Bowling Green, 2:00 p.m.
LOOKING TO TAKE ONE MORE STEP
The 2004 Falcons will look to advance to the MAC Tournament's championship match for the third time in five years ... BGSU advanced to the final in both 2000 and 2003 ... last year's team went 8-12-3, with five of the 12 setbacks coming to teams that advanced to the NCAA Tournament ... a total of 19 letterwinners, including 10 starters, return from that squad.
HEAD COACH ANDY RICHARDS
Andy Richards enters his fifth season as a collegiate head coach, all with the Falcons, and has an overall record of 37-40-6 ... Richards has led the Falcons to the three finest seasons in school history over his first four years ... last season, he guided the Falcons to the championship match of the MAC Tournament for the second time in his four seasons ... BGSU has advanced to the semifinals of the league tourney in three of his four campaigns to date ... Ashlee Orr embarks upon her fifth season as an assistant coach for the Brown and Orange, while Eric Golz begins his first fall on Richards' staff.
THE FALCONS ARE...
BGSU IN HOME TOURNAMENTS
The Falcons have hosted a tourney on just one other occasion ... in 1998, BG defeated Western Illinois (3-0) and Robert Morris (9-2) in the Falcon Classic ... that season, just like this year, a Michigan MAC school rounded out the field ... Central Michigan also defeated both WIU and RMC, but the Falcons were declared the tournament champions due to the goal-differential tiebreaker.
FALCONS PICKED FOR FIFTH-PLACE TIE
The Falcons were picked to finish in a fifth-place tie in the MAC in the league preseason poll ... the poll, released August 17, is a result of voting by the league's 13 head coaches ... Western Michigan, the defending league tournament champion, was picked to win the 2004 regular-season crown, followed by Ohio, Eastern Michigan and Miami ... BGSU was picked to tie with Ball State for fifth place ... the Falcons were the choice of two coaches to win the league tourney, trailing WMU (7) and OU (3) in that category ... Miami received the other tournament-title vote.
DEFYING THE EXPERTS
The Falcons have made a habit of proving the 'experts' wrong over the years ... in the program's history, BGSU has always finished higher than predicted in the preseason coaches poll in the even-numbered years ... in the odd years, the Falcons have finished lower than picked in the preseason ... the complete history follows ...
BGSU'S MAC PRESEASON POLL HISTORY
Year Poll Favorite (AF) BG Picked... BGSU's Actual Finish 1997 Northern Ill. (1st) T-Fifth Eighth of 8 1998 Northern Ill. (T-1st) Ninth Sixth of 11 (advanced to ty. SF) 1999 Ohio (5th) Sixth 10th of 12 2000 Eastern Mich. (2nd) Eighth Seventh of 12 (advanced to ty. Champ.) 2001 Miami (3rd) Sixth 12th of 13 2002 Miami (1st) Ninth Fourth of 13 (advanced to ty. SF) 2003 Ohio (T-5th) Fourth Eighth of 13 (advanced to ty. Champ.) 2004 Western Michigan T-Fifth
THE OPPONENTS / THE SERIES
Duquesne returns 16 letterwinners, including seven starters, from last season's 8-10-2 squad ... that team, in head coach James Walker's first season, finished 4-6-1 in the Atlantic 10 Conference, good for an eighth-place finish for the Dukes ... Walker will be making a homecoming of sorts, as he is a 1997 graduate of nearby Tiffin University ... the school's athletics web page is www.GoDuquesne.com.
Pittsburgh has 16 letterwinners, including nine starters, back from last year's team ... in head coach Sue-Moy Chin's first season at the helm, the 2003 Panthers went 5-10-2 overall and 1-4-1 in the Big East Conference, good for a sixth-place Mid-Atlantic Division finish ... the school's athletic web site is www.pittsburghpanthers.com.
The Falcons have never met Duquesne in women's soccer ... BGSU leads Pittsburgh, 1-0-0, in that series ... in the lone previous meeting, the Falcons picked up a 1-0 win on Sept. 13, 2002 ... that match came in the Ohio State Invitational in Columbus, Ohio.
THE RETURNEES LOGGED A LOTTA TIME
The Falcons have 19 returning letterwinners this season, the most in school history ... the returning Falcons combined to provide nearly 96 percent of the team's scoring last fall ... at the other end of the pitch, BGSU returns all but one defender, and the returning goalkeepers combined to play 99.5% of the minutes between the posts in '03.
MANY RETURNEES = MUCH SUCCESS?
It makes sense that teams with a great deal of depth and experience enjoy a great deal of success ... if that's the case, then Falcon fans are in for an enjoyable season in 2004 ... BGSU returns 19 letterwinners, the most in school history, including 10 starters ... the Falcons welcomed back 10 starters on two other occasions, in 2000 and 2003 ... in each of those seasons, the Brown and Orange advanced all the way to the MAC Tournament's championship match.
THE TOURNEY'S THE THING
Last year's Falcon squad grabbed the eighth and final seed for the MAC Tournament, needing (and getting) a win and an Akron loss on the final day of regular-season conference action ... when the tourney began, however, head coach Andy Richards and company became the first-ever #8 seed to advance past the opening round ... and, of course, BGSU was the first #8 seed to qualify for the championship match ... the previous lowest seed in MAC history to make it to the final was the 2000 Falcon team, in Richards' first season at the helm ... that BG team was seeded seventh.
COPPES, MEISTER A ONE-TWO PUNCH
The duo of senior Kristy Coppes and junior Samantha Meister shapes up to be one of the most potent offensive tandems in the MAC ... Coppes has totals of 34 goals and 73 points in her BG career, holding the school record in each category ... she is the first player in school history to score at least 10 goals in three different seasons ... Meister matched Coppes with 10 goals last year, and led the Falcons with a total of 26 points en route to earning All-MAC First-Team honors ... no other MAC school had a pair of 10-goal scorers in 2003, much less a duo of returning double-digit strikers.
CLOSE CALLS (AND REALLY CLOSE CALLS)
The Falcons saw a school-record 15 matches, including nine consecutive contests leading up to the MAC Tournament's championship, decided by one goal or fewer last season ... and, the 2003 Falcons were no strangers to overtime ... BGSU went to overtime in five of the last seven regular-season matches, and hit OT in a school-record eight contests ... the Falcons are now 9-11-12 all-time in overtime, including 2-3-3 last year.
GETTING IT DONE IN THE CLASSROOM
The following BGSU women's soccer team members -- 10 of the 19 returning student-athletes -- currently hold a cumulative grade-point average of 3.00 or greater ... those 10 players are Britt Anderson, Jenny Berlovan, Molly Bremen, Keeley Dayton%, Leah Eggleton, Samantha Meister, Nikki Pucillo, Beth Rieman, Ali Shingler% and Julie Trundle.
% denotes perfect 4.00 cumulative GPA
