Bowling Green State University Athletics
It's Game Day, Baby: Falcons Face UCLA in NCAA Championships
March 19, 2006 | Women's Basketball
March 19, 2006
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - UCLA captured its first Pac-10 tournament title this season. Next on the to-do list is its first national championship.
The fifth-seeded Bruins make their first NCAA tournament appearance in two years when they face Bowling Green in the opening round of the Cleveland Regional in West Lafayette, Ind., on Sunday.
The Bruins (20-10) finished third in the Pac-10 behind Stanford and Arizona State, but stepped up their play in the conference tournament with wins over California, the Sun Devils and the Cardinal.
The automatic bid sent the Bruins to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003-04, when they lost to Minnesota in the first round as a No. 10 seed.
UCLA is 7-8 in eight previous tournament appearances. Its best performance was in 1998-99, when it lost to Louisiana Tech in the regional final.
Junior Noelle Quinn averages 18.3 points and 8.2 rebounds to pace an offense that scores 78.2 points per game, seventh in the nation. UCLA has four double-digit scorers in Quinn, seniors Lisa Willis (17.7) and Nikki Blue (12.5) and sophomore Lindsey Pluimer (10.8).
Willis is the school's all-time leader in 3-pointers made with 248 and Blue ranks fifth in career points with 1,772.
Quinn and Willis shined in the Pac-10 championship game, combining for 42 points as UCLA rallied from a 13-point second-half deficit to beat Stanford 85-76 on March 6.
"We never thought we were going to lose this game," Quinn said. "We kept chipping away, chipping away, plugging away. We showed them tonight what we could do. Hopefully we showed our critics."
Bowling Green (28-2) has given critics very little to talk about this season.
The Falcons have won 19 straight games and are coming off their second straight Mid-American Conference regular-season title and tournament championship. They finished 16-0 in the conference to become the fifth team in MAC history to go undefeated in league play.
Bowling Green, though, faces a tough task in Sunday's matchup with UCLA. No MAC school has won a tournament game since 1996, when Kent State and Toledo earned first-round victories.
Last season, in the school's first NCAA tournament appearance since 1993-94, the 13th-seeded Falcons lost 70-60 to Kansas State in the opening round to drop to 1-7 in the NCAAs.
Bowling Green coach Curt Miller has all of his starters back from last season, and four players who average double digits in points in Ali Mann (14.6), Liz Honegger (13.2), Carin Horne (11.8) and Kate Achter (10.9).
In the Falcons' 64-39 win over Kent State in the MAC title game March 11, Horne had 16 points and nine rebounds, and Honegger and Mann each scored 14.
Bowling Green held the Golden Flashes to 32.0 percent shooting from the field and had a 37-20 advantage in rebounds.
"To have the bull's eye on our back the entire year and finish off the season 28-2, what an unbelievable storybook ending to a fantastic year," Miller said.
Bowling Green and UCLA have never met. Sunday's winner will face 11th-ranked Purdue or Missouri State on Tuesday.
