Bowling Green State University Athletics
Achter Rotates Into Starting Guard Position at BG
January 04, 2005 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 4, 2005
By J. Patrick Eaken, Press Sports Editor - Bowling Green freshman and former Clay basketball star Kate Achter is averaging 10 points, a team-high 4.5 assists per game, and is third on the team with 4.2 rebounds.
As a result, Achter, redshirt junior Casey McDowell, and sophomore Megan Thorburn have joined leading scorers Liz Honegger (14.4 points) and Ali Mann (12.3 points) in the Falcon's starting five the last two games.
On Dec. 20, trailing by as many as 11 points in the second half, BG rallied for a 66-51 win over Robert Morris as Achter led the winners with 18 points. Honegger and Mann had 16 and 12, respectively. At one point, Achter led an 18-point Falcon scoring streak in the second half.
The Falcons trailed by seven, 43-36, with 13 minutes left in the contest, before going on an 18-0 run to take the lead for good. BG held the hosts scoreless for over nine minutes during that time. The Falcons outscored the Colonials, 43-20, in the second half.
In addition to her team-high 18 points, Achter, a 5'8 guard, had eight rebounds, six assists and four steals in only 23 minutes of action.
The second-half comeback was the Falcons' second in a three-day span in Western Pennsylvania. BGSU trailed by nine points at St. Francis before rallying back for an 80-74 overtime victory. Achter contributed 14 points and also had seven rebounds and a game-high six assists. She was one of four BG players scoring in double-digits.
Achter was once part of the Clay varsity programs that used to travel across Northwest Ohio when the Eagles competed in the Great Lakes League. Now, she is traveling across the country as BG plays its non conference schedule.
The Falcons women's basketball team, for the first time in exactly one month, were playing their first home game against Bucknell on Thursday (Dec. 30) and are currently 6-4 after concluding a six-game road stretch, the holiday break, and the non-conference portions of the schedule.
BGSU will take to the road once again, beginning the Mid-American Conference slate with games at Buffalo (Jan. 5) and Western Michigan (Jan. 8).
The month of December has seen the Falcons play two games each in the states of Rhode Island, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, but none in the state of Ohio. In the month of December alone, the Falcons have logged over 5,202 miles of travel via airplane, bus and van. That figure does not include trips from the airport to the hotel and vice versa, from the hotel to the arena and back for daily practices and shoot arounds, or each individual's trip home for the holiday break.
At Clay, Achter was a four-year letterwinner for coach Roger Achter, her father, as well as three-time league Player of the Year. She earned that honor in the GLL as both a sophomore and a junior, as the Eagles captured the league crown each year, and was the Toledo City League POY as a senior, and earned all-state first-team honors as well.
Notre Dame coach Rhett Boyd, whose team defeated Clay 66-59 last year, remembered what it was like the first year he saw her play in the City League. He said his Eagles did everything they could to hold Achter to 24 points.
"You're always going to run gimmicks against her -- a box-and-one, triangle-and-two, diamond-and-one -- so she's faced every type of defense you can throw at her," Boyd said. "What I like about her is she works to get the ball back. She works off the ball. She's capable of hitting jump shots, she's capable of getting to the rim, and when you run at her she can distribute the ball to hit the open girl. She has the whole package," Boyd told The Press.
Even veteran coach Jerry Sigler, whose fifth-ranked, unbeaten, and state-bound Northview squad held Achter to 11 points in a win over the Eagles last season, was enamored with Achter's ability.
"I like her competitiveness and the fact she's constantly looking to score," Sigler said. "If she can't get it done, she looks to get it to a teammate. She just plays extremely hard all the time. She doesn't have a great deal of (talented) players around her, but the team seems to do fairly well. As Kate goes, so goes the team."
The Eagle guard averaged 24.9 points, 7.0 assists and 5.6 rebounds per game as a senior and finished her career as the school's all-time leading scorer, boy or girl, with 1,564 points. She also had 502 assists and 415 rebounds in her high school tenure.
Her senior year at Clay, the guard received District 7 and Northwest Ohio POY honors. During her high school career, she was a three-time all-district first-team pick, and earned all-state third-team honors as a junior after garnering honorable mention as a sophomore and was an All-Northwest Ohio Second-Team honoree in each of those years. After finishing her career at Clay, Achter was MVP of the Ohio/Indiana All-Star Game.
But whoever said the day of the three-sport all around athlete was a thing of the past, needs to look again. Achter also earned four letters each in golf and track at Clay and was a multi-year team captain in all three sports.
She was a four-time all-district first-team golfer, finished second in the state in the 100 hurdles as a senior, was first-team all-state in that event, as well as the long jump and the 100 meters her junior year, and a state qualifier in both the long jump and the 100 hurdles as a freshman and sophomore. She plans to play on the Falcon women's golf team in the spring.
Achter said she had a hard time ending her high school career playing basketball for her father, who played baseball at BGSU and was a member of the 1979 Clay AAA state championship baseball team. His daughter seems to have made the adjustment, however.
"I can't wait to get to college," Achter told The Press a year ago after scoring a career-high 43 points in a 68-66 win over Scott. "As far as high school basketball is concerned, I don't really want to ever stop playing for my dad."
"We've developed a bond that a lot of fathers and daughters don't develop," Roger said. "That's the one thing that basketball has given us, and I'm grateful for that."
