Bowling Green State University Athletics
Falcons Face Notre Dame Monday Night
November 12, 2006 | Women's Basketball
Nov. 12, 2006
BGSU Game Notes & Statistics (21 pages) in PDF Format
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BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -
BGSU at NOTRE DAME
Mon., November 13, 2006 • 7:00 p.m. ET
Joyce Center (11,418) • Notre Dame, Ind.
RECORDS: BGSU 1-0 (28-3 in 2005-06) // Notre Dame 1-0 (18-12 in '05-06)
RADIO: WBGU-FM (88.1) - Brian Scullin and Paul Braverman
SERIES: Notre Dame leads, 2-0
LAST MEETING: Notre Dame 85, at BGSU 70 (Nov. 23, 1996)
THE GAME
The Bowling Green State University women's basketball team, after posting a 31-point road win to begin the 2006-07 season, returns to the road for a Monday (Nov. 13) game ... the Falcons of head coach Curt Miller, the two-time defending Mid-American Conference regular-season and tournament champions, will take on the University of Notre Dame, with tipoff scheduled for 7:00 p.m. ET at the Joyce Center (11,418) ... Miller and his staff returned nine letterwinners, including all five starters, from last year's 28-3 team that set school and MAC single-season records for victories ... BG went a perfect 16-0 in conference play a year ago.
MATCHUP OF NCAA TOURNEY TEAMS
For the Falcons, Monday's Notre Dame game is the first of at least six matchups against teams that advanced to national post-season play last year ... BGSU will meet four teams that qualified for the NCAA Championships in 2006, including the Fighting Irish ... both the Falcons and Notre Dame saw their 2005-06 seasons come to an end in West Lafayette in the first round of the national tourney, as BGSU fell to UCLA while the Irish lost to Boston College.
THE SOMEWHAT IRRESISTABLE FORCE MEETS THE PRETTY MUCH IMMOVABLE OBJECT
Something's gotta give when Bowling Green takes on Notre Dame Monday night ... on one hand, the Falcons are 73-21 since the current senior class arrived on campus, 29-3 in the last 32 overall games, and BG has won nine consecutive road games since an overtime loss at Kentucky on Jan. 2, 2006 ... on the other hand, Notre Dame is 28-14 all-time against the current MAC schools, including a 17-4 record at home, and the Fighting Irish have won 136 of their last 152 games at the Joyce Center.
FALCONS RECEIVE SOME PRESEASON PUB
BGSU has been listed in several preseason polls and rankings as the 2006-07 season gets underway ... the Falcons were ranked 20th in the nation in the Athlon Sports poll, 21st by Lindy's and 25th in the country in the CSTV.com preseason poll ... additionally, ESPN women's basketball analyst Nancy Lieberman ranked the Falcons 24th in the nation on her preseason chart ... BGSU was listed 30th (fifth team under 'receiving votes') in the USA Today/ESPN coaches preseason poll, and the Falcons were 29th in the initial Associated Press rankings of the year ... finally, Charlie Creme had the Falcons ranked 32nd on his list of "64 teams we like heading into 2006-07" on ESPN.com.
LAST TIME OUT
The Falcons battled through some early-game jitters to post a 68-37 win at Detroit Friday night (Nov. 10) in the season opener for both teams ... BGSU received a balanced scoring effort, as six players scored between nine and 11 points on the night ... seniors Carin Horne and Ali Mann scored 11 points apiece, while senior Megan Thorburn and junior Whitney Taylor each had 10 points ... senior Liz Honegger had nine points, while classmate Amber Flynn also had nine points, along with a game-high eight rebounds off the bench ... the Falcons got off to a slow start, as UDM took a 5-0 lead and held BG without a field goal for over five minutes ... but, the Falcons battled back to take the lead for good, 14-13, on a pair of Mann free throws with 10:47 left in the first half ... BGSU then rolled to a 37-19 halftime lead, and the Falcons were never headed ... the Falcons shot 45.1 percent from the field, while holding the Titans to just a 24.5% success rate.
HONEGGER NEARING A(NOTHER) RECORD
Officially, senior Liz Honegger was credited with one blocked shot in Friday's win at Detroit ... Honegger's name is all over the BGSU lists for blocks, and she is approaching yet another record ... she set the single-game record as a freshman, and has tied or broken the school season marks - both overall and in MAC games - in each of her first three seasons ... now, Honegger is just two rejections away from tying Angie Bonner's BG career record ... Honegger, of course, is on pace to obliterate the school career mark for blocks per game.
BACK HOME AGAIN IN INDIANA
Senior Liz Honegger has experienced a great deal of success in the Falcons' last few trips to the state of Indiana ... Honegger, a native of Lafayette, Ind., has posted the three highest-scoring totals of her career in BG visits to her home state ... as a sophomore, she scored a career-high 27 points at IPFW (Nov. 19, 2004), then matched that total in a win at Ball State (Feb. 8, 2005) ... she had a 25-point game vs. IUPUI last Nov. 25 (part of IU's Hampton Inn Classic), marking the third time in her career - all in Indiana - that she had scored at least 25 points in a game ... in last season's win at BSU (Feb. 11, 2006), Honegger had 'only' 14 points, but also had five blocks, four steals and was 3-for-3 from three-point land ... in the NCAA Tournament vs. UCLA at Purdue's Mackey Arena, Honegger scored 15 points and picked up five steals.
THE FALCONS ARE ...
• 94-56 in the five years (plus one game) since Curt Miller took the BG helm in May of 2001;
• 51-29 in MAC games in that time;
• 73-21 overall and 40-8 in the MAC over the last three-plus seasons, since the current senior class arrived on campus in the fall of 2003;
• 35-4 in the last 39 overall games since February of 2005 (with the losses coming to Kansas State [2005 NCAA Tournament], Delaware, Kentucky and UCLA [2006 NCAA Tournament]);
• 9-1 in the MAC Tournament in the last three seasons;
• 25-0 in the last 25 games against MAC opponents, since a loss at Eastern Michigan on Feb. 19, 2005 (the Falcons won the final three regular-season games of 2004-05, then won three-straight games in the MAC Tournament, before going 16-0 in league regular-season play and winning three more conference tourney contests in '05-06);
• 9-0 in the last nine road games, since an overtime loss at Kentucky last Jan. 2;
• 36-0 when outrebounding the opponent since the start of the 2004-05 season;
• 6-0 in the last six regular-season games in the state of Indiana, having averaged 79.0 points per game; and
• 29-2 when allowing the opponent to score fewer than 70 points since the start of the 2005-06 season (BGSU has only allowed one team - UCLA - to top the 70-point mark in the last 32 games).
A LITTLE MORE ABOUT THE FALCONS
The Falcons, 1-0 on the young season, returned nine letterwinners from last year's team that finished 28-3 overall and won the MAC with a perfect 16-0 league ledger ... BGSU, after winning the conference's regular-season title for the second year in a row, went on to win the Kraft MAC Tournament for the second-straight March ... head coach Curt Miller and Company returned all five starters from last season ... the returning players combined for 92.9 percent of the team's scoring and 90.7% of the Falcons' rebounding total.
THE SENIORS
BGSU's senior class is one of the finest in school history ... that group includes four returning starters in Liz Honegger, Carin Horne, Ali Mann and Megan Thorburn ... additionally, Amber Flynn was one of the most improved players in the MAC last season ... a sixth senior, Julie Gompers, missed each of the last two seasons due to injury and will again be sidelined in 2006-07 ... the class has been an integral part of the Falcons' 73-21 overall mark in the last three-plus years, and BG has advanced to the championship game of the MAC Tournament every year since they arrived.
THE JUNIORS
The Falcons' two juniors, Kate Achter and Whitney Taylor, have helped BGSU win MAC regular-season and tournament titles in each of their first two seasons ... BG has an overall record of 52-11 since the two arrived on campus, and the Falcons are 49-7 when Achter is in the starting lineup.
THE SOPHOMORES
Lindsey Goldsberry and Jasmine McCall have seen their team win over 90 percent of its games, and the two players have never been a part of a loss to a MAC opponent ... McCall played in every game last year, while Goldsberry saw action in 30 of the 31 games, making two starts.
THE FRESHMEN
Tara Breske (Temperance, Mich.), Laura Bugher (Greenwood, Ind.) and Sarah Clapper (Newark, Ohio) join the Falcons for the 2006-07 season ... stats from the Detroit game were more of an approximation than an exact science, but the three players combined for roughly 20 minutes played, two points and five rebounds in their respective collegiate debuts.
BENCHMARKS
The Falcons returned all five starters from the 2005-06 team that went 28-3 ... but, at Detroit, it was the play of the BG bench that provided a spark in the first half ... senior Amber Flynn, junior Whitney Taylor and sophomore Jasmine McCall, in particular, were a big part of the Falcons' win ... Taylor, the first player off the bench at UDM, had 10 points in a career-high 18 minutes, while Flynn scored nine points and had a game-high eight rebounds ... McCall had two points, but had four assists and four steals to top all players in both categories ... "I thought Jasmine may have played the best game of her BGSU career tonight," said coach Curt Miller following the game ... the BG bench outscored Detroit's reserves by a 25-4 count.
DOING IT WITH DEFENSE
The BGSU defense held Detroit to just five field goals in the first half and 13 for the game ... the Brown and Orange allowed the Titans to shoot just 18.5 percent from the floor in the opening 20 minutes, en route to a 24.5% field-goal percentage on the evening ... and, the Falcons allowed the Titans to make just one field goal over the final 11:14 of the first half.
DOING IT WITH DEFENSE II
Detroit's total of 37 points marked the fewest allowed by the Falcons in the Curt Miller Era ... BGSU had surrendered just 39 points on two occasions during Miller's tenure, most recently against Kent State in last year's MAC Tournament championship ... the Titans' 24.5% field-goal pct. was the second-lowest against the Brown and Orange during that time, topped (bottomed?) only by Savannah State's 20.8% rate in December of 2002.
DEFENSE LEADS TO OFFENSE
The Falcons also held the Titans off the scoreboard for a lengthy stretch in the second half on Friday, long enough to put together a 16-0 run ... that run was longer than any scoring run by the 2005-06 Falcons ... last season, BGSU's biggest run was 15-0, in a win over Ohio.
SCOUTING NOTRE DAME
Notre Dame, like BGSU, enters Monday's game with a 1-0 record ... the Fighting Irish began the season with a home win over Central Michigan, 88-66, on Friday night (Nov. 10) ... four players scored in double digits in that game, as UND registered its highest point total in two years ... junior center Melissa D'Amico led the way with 16 points in just 15 minutes, while junior guard Charel Allen had 15 points ... the Irish returned eight letterwinners, including three starters, from last year's team that went 18-12 overall, 8-8 in Big East play and advanced to the NCAA Tournament ... one of those returning starters, sophomore guard Lindsay Schrader, has suffered a season-ending injury ... the other two returning starters are junior guard Tulyah Gaines and senior guard Breona Gray ... Muffet McGraw, in her 20th season as head coach of the Irish, has a record of 430-167 ... the school's athletics web site is www.und.com.
THE SERIES
The Falcons trail Notre Dame, 2-0, in the all-time series between the teams, with the Irish winning those two games by an average of 20 points ... in the lone previous game at the Joyce Center, the Irish posted a 92-67 win nearly 11 years ago (Nov. 26, 1995) ... the teams met again the following year, and the Irish picked up an 85-70 win at Anderson Arena (Nov. 23, 1996) ... the boxscore from the most recent meeting can be found in the pdf version of this game notes package.
LAST TIME THEY MET
The Falcons held a 43-39 halftime lead over Notre Dame, but the Irish outscored BGSU, 46-27, in the second half en route to the win at Anderson Arena (Nov. 23, 1996) ... Katryna Gaither, a preseason All-America honorable-mention pick, scored 19 of her game-high 25 points after the break, leading five members of the Irish in double digits ... Notre Dame entered the contest ranked No. 14 in the Associated Press poll and 17th in the USA Today/CNN Coaches poll ... Falcon senior Michelle Terry led the home team with 16 points, while sophomore guard Chrissy Billiter came off the bench to score 11 markers ... three Falcons scored nine points apiece, including Charlotta Jones, Sherry Kahle and Jacki Raterman ... for Raterman, the nine points represented a career best to that point, while Kahle was 4-for-5 from the field after earning the start in her collegiate debut.
EARLY START
The game at Detroit on Friday - November 10 - marked the earliest start to the season in school history, and, obviously, the earliest win in BG annals ... the Falcons began the 2004-05 season on Nov. 12, with a Preseason WNIT game at Ohio State.
WELCOME FRESHMEN
All 12 players on the active roster saw action for the Falcons in the win at UDM, including all three freshmen ... Tara Breske made her collegiate debut with 10:45 remaining in the second half, while Sarah Clapper checked in with 8:54 on the clock ... Laura Bugher saw her first action with 6:49 left in the game.
FALCONS PREDICTED TO THREE-PEAT
The Falcons have been picked to win the MAC's East Division and repeat as MAC Tournament champions in 2007, according to the league's preseason poll ... the poll is the result of voting by members of the MAC News Media Association and the league's 12 head coaches ... the Falcons received 245 points and 40 of the 41 first-place votes in the poll ... Eastern Michigan, the preseason choice in the West Division, received 214 points and garnered 21 first-place votes ... a total of 35 voters chose BGSU to win the MAC Tournament, with Kent State (two), Western Michigan (two) and Toledo (one) also receiving votes.
A FEW MORE NOTES FROM THE DETROIT GAME
BGSU is now 15-19 in season-opening games in program history,and 11-23 in road openers • Detroit still holds a 10-9 lead in the all-time series with BGSU ... but, the Falcons have won the last three contests in the series, including wins at Calihan Hall in each of the last two years ... last Nov. 30, the Brown and Orange rallied from a second-half deficit for a 78-67 win in the Motor City • BGSU has held two of the last three opponents to under 40 points, dating to last season ... and, the Falcons have limited three of the last four foes to 46 points or less ... BG picked up wins by scores of 68-46 (Toledo) and 64-39 (Kent State) to cap last year's MAC Tournament run • junior Whitney Taylor played a career-high 18 minutes in the win, and also set a career best with four free throws made • sophomore Jasmine McCall, a native of Detroit, had four steals in her hometown to tie her career best.
35 OF THE LAST 39
The Falcons have won 35 of the last 39 games, dating to February of 2005 ... BGSU's only losses during that time have come to Kansas State (2005 NCAA Tournament), Delaware (by four points at St. Joseph's tournament), Kentucky (overtime in Lexington) and UCLA (2006 NCAA Tournament).
HONEGGER IN A CLASS BY HERSELF
Liz Honegger is making her mark as one of the top players in school history, and as one of the most versatile players in the history of the MAC ... three years into her career, Honegger has accomplished something that no other MAC player has ever done ... Honegger is the only player in MAC history to block at least 125 shots and make at least 125 three-point field goals in her career ... she enters the Notre Dame game with totals of 153 treys and 153 rejections ... only two other players in MAC annals reached 100 in both categories (Stephanie Smiley [Eastern Michigan, 1998-2002], 174 three-pointers, 103 blocks; Tamara Bowie [Ball State, 2000-03], 100 three-pointers, 152 blocks).
SHE'S THE ONLY MEMBER OF THIS CLASS, TOO
Liz Honegger is the only player in BGSU history to make more than 40 three-point field goals and block 40 shots in the same season ... and, in 2005-06, she joined that 40-40 club for the second-straight year ... Honegger made 59 triples and blocked 50 shots in her sophomore season, and had 57 treys and a school-record 52 blocks last winter ... her 2005-06 totals make her the first member of the 50-50 club as well.
DOUBLE TROUBLE
Senior Ali Mann scored 11 points in the win at Detroit, giving her 71 double-digit scoring games in her career ... in that game, classmate Carin Horne reached double figures in scoring for the 45th time as a Falcon ... Megan Thorburn's 10-point game marked the 16th time she has reached that plateau, while junior Whitney Taylor had the third double-figure scoring night of her BGSU tenure, and the first since her freshman year.
HEAD COACH Curt Miller
BGSU head coach Curt Miller has been named the MAC Coach of the Year in each of the last two seasons, and was the 2006 Russell Athletic/WBCA Region Four Coach of the Year as well ... his career record currently stands at 94-56, in his sixth year ... over the last three-plus seasons, Miller and the Falcons are 73-21 ... BGSU has gone 40-8 in MAC regular-season play in that time, and 49-9 in all games vs. league foes during that span (9-1 in league tourney play).
MILLER AT 150
The Detroit game was the 150th contest of Curt Miller's coaching career at BGSU ... only three previous BGSU coaches - Kathy Bole (71-81), Fran Voll (144-60) and Jaci Clark (135-65) - have been at the helm for more games ... only Voll (112-38, 74.7%) and Clark (101-49, 67.3%) had a better winning percentage than Miller (62.7%) through 150 games on the BGSU bench ... random, useless note alert: Clark's 150th game as a head coach, like Miller's, was a road win over Detroit.
UP NEXT
The Falcons will jet south for this weekend's UCF Golden Knights Tournament in Orlando, Fla. ... BGSU will meet Albany in Friday (Nov. 17) action, beginning at 5:00 p.m., with host UCF meeting Fairleigh Dickinson in Friday's other game ... on Saturday (Nov. 18), the consolation game will be at 3:00 p.m., with the championship at 5:00 p.m.
