Bowling Green State University
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WESTERN MICHIGAN
Falcons Hold Off Hard-Charging Broncos, 77-69
January 28, 2006 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 28, 2006
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio - The Bowling Green State University women's basketball team, trailing by eight points, used a late first-half run to take the lead for good, then held off a spirited Western Michigan University squad in the second half for a 77-69 win Saturday afternoon (Jan. 28). The Mid-American Conference game was held at BGSU's venerable Anderson Arena.
With the win, the Falcons improve to 16-2 overall and 7-0 in MAC play. The Broncos drop to 7-11 and 4-3, respectively.
In the game, which had a tournament-like atmosphere, Falcon junior Liz Honegger became the 20th player in school history to reach the 1,000-point mark for her career. Honegger is only the seventh player in BGSU annals to reach the milestone prior to her senior year.
Junior Ali Mann led the Falcons with 22 points, while sophomore Kate Achter had 19 points and a game-high nine rebounds. Junior Carin Horne had 16 points, including a key three-pointer late in the game.
Carrie Moore made her first eight shots on the day for Western, finishing with a game-high 28 points on 12-for-15 shooting. Casey Rost added 17 and Lindsey Brown 11 for the visitors.
Honegger entered the game needing three points to reach the millennium mark, and wasted little time in doing so. She missed a pair of shots in the early going, but drew a foul exactly four minutes into the contest, and converted a pair of free throws. Then, 34 seconds later, she rebounded a missed shot and laid the ball in, joining the exclusive 1,000-point club in the process.
The Broncos, featuring three of the league's top-six scorers in Brown, Moore and Rost, battled the Falcons to a drew over the first 10-plus minutes. The opening 10:24 featured seven ties, with the Broncos keeping the Falcons from seizing the lead during that entire span.
Finally, the Brown and Orange forged ahead, albeit briefly. With 12:29 left in the half, freshman Jasmine McCall's pass found Honegger inside for a short jumper to tie the contest at 13-13. Less than a minute later, senior Casey McDowell's nifty pass found Mann cutting down the lane all alone for an easy layup. The Falcons led for the first time.
Maria Jilian, however, erased that lead with a pair of free throws, and a Rost jumper midway through the period gave the Broncos a 17-15 advantage.
Achter drew a foul and netted a pair of charity tosses to tie the score once again. Then, though, the visitors got rolling.
Western would hit three three-point field goals over the next three minutes, taking a seven-point lead. First, Rost took a pass from Jilian and hit a trey for a 20-17 WMU lead. At that juncture, with 9:14 left in the half, Rost had 10 points.
Then, Jilian found Moore for a triple at the 8:48 mark. On the next WMU possession, a long rebound came right to Achter, who was ahead of the pack and streaked downcourt for an easy layup. But, Moore came back with another triple, giving her 12 points on the afternoon and her team a 26-19 lead with 6:44 left in the half.
Achter split a pair of free throws, but Moore got loose for a jumper, giving Western an eight-point lead, the visitors' largest of the game, at 28-20.
Then, however, a jumper by Falcon freshman Lindsey Goldsberry began a 17-4 run to end the half.
Mann canned a jumper, then hit a pair of free throws to cut the lead to two points with 4:36 left in the half.
Amanda Parker responded with a jumper, then looked to have an easy layup with 3:55 left in the half, but an offensive foul was called on Western's Tiera DeLaHoussaye as she drove and dished the ball to an open Parker. The offensive foul sent the teams into the half's final media timeout still separated by four points.
Out of that timeout, Goldsberry's pass found junior Amber Flynn for a layup, and jump shots by Horne and Mann gave the Brown and Orange a 32-30 lead with 2:08 left before the break.
A pair of Rost free throws tied the game, but a driving layup by McCall began a half-ending 5-0 run. Three free throws over the final 1:27 gave BG a 37-32 lead, the Falcons' largest lead of the game to that point, at the intermission.
The Falcons came out like the proverbial house afire to start the second half. BG got points on each of the first five possessions of the half, scoring 10 points over the first 2:01 and 12 points before the first media timeout of the half.
For their part, the Broncos began the half with six points in that span, starting with a jumper by Brown just 13 seconds into the half. Only 11 seconds after that, however, Horne's first of three second-half three-pointers opened the Falcon floodgates.
After a Western miss, Mann hit a jumper, and the junior took a pass from classmate Megan Thorburn and drilled a triple of her own at the 18:29 mark, giving BG a double-digit lead at 45-34.
Two Moore layups were answered by four Falcon free throws over the next few minutes, and then, both teams cooled off offensively. With BG leading by 10 points, Moore and Western began to mount a comeback.
Moore forced a BG turnover at midcourt, and sailed in all alone for a layup with 13:39 left. Then, after another Falcon turnover, Moore converted a three-point play, with the free throw cutting the lead to 51-46.
Achter and Brown traded layups, before another Horne three-ball gave BG a 56-48 lead. The lead reached double digits once again on a Mann layup with 11:12 left, and went to 11 points, 61-50, on a Mann trey two minutes later. After a pair of WMU free throws, a McDowell three-pointer gave BG a 12-point lead with 8:48 left.
The Falcons still led by 12, 66-54, after a pair of Achter free throws with 7:25 left, but the Broncos refused to go away. Rost took a pass from Jilian and drilled a three, then returned the favor less than a minute later, finding Jilian for another Bronco trey. After a Moore steal, a Jilian jumper cut BG's margin to just 66-62 with 5:26 to play.
Achter stopped the BG bleeding momentarily, drawing a foul and hitting two shots from the stripe, but Brown's jumper returned the visitors to within four. Then, with 3:07 to go, Moore grabbed a teammate's miss, converted a layup and drew a Falcon foul.
With a chance to cut the lead to a single point, however, Moore saw her free throw bounce off the iron. Honegger grabbed the rebound, and Achter was fouled just six seconds later. Her free throws returned the margin to four points with 3:01 on the clock.
Moore split a pair of charity tosses, but an Achter offensive rebound on the Falcons' next possession paved the way for a key basket. On the play, BG got the ball down low, then McDowell received a pass at the arc on the left wing. She quickly kicked the ball to Horne at the left elbow, and the junior's three-point try found nothing but net. BG led by six, 73-67, with 2:11 on the clock.
The Broncos missed three-point tries on each of the next two possessions, and Achter and Mann each hit a pair of free throws in the final 36 seconds. A late layup by Moore provided the final margin.
In addition to BG's three double-figure scorers, the Falcons got eight points from McDowell off the bench. The BGSU bench outscored Western Michigan, 14-4, on the day.
Achter had a game-high nine rebounds, as mentioned, tying her career best, while Honegger had six points and seven boards in the win. Jilian had seven points and a game-beste seven assists for the Broncos.
The teams battled to a deadlock in points in the paint (28-28) and points off turnovers (21-21), and BG had a narrow 33-32 rebounding advantage over Western in the game.
BGSU's 24-for-27 effort from the free-throw line (88.9 percent) included a perfect 14-for-14 performance in the second half. WMU was 9-of-12 from the stripe.
The Falcons made six three-pointers in 11 tries in the second half, and were 7-of-16 (43.8%) for the game. The Broncos were 6-of-20 from long range.
The Falcons, atop the East Division by two games, now prepare to face West Division-leading Eastern Michigan on Wednesday night (Feb. 1), in a battle of the league's two remaining unbeaten teams. That game will begin at 7:00 p.m. at Anderson.
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