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Bowling Green State University Athletics
Bowling Green State University
AKRON
Falcons Top Akron, 80-51, for Goldsberry's 100th Win with Program
January 17, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 17, 2009
Final Stats
| BGSU-Akron Boxscore in PDF Format 
BGSU's Cumulative Statistics in PDF Format
Goldsberry Post-Game Audio
Coach Miller Post-Game Audio
McCoy Post-Game Audio
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio (BGSUFalcons.com) - Sophomore Lauren Prochaska scored a game-high 18 points as the Bowling Green State University women's basketball team posted an 80-51 win over the University of Akron Saturday afternoon (Jan. 17). The Mid-American Conference game was held at venerable Anderson Arena on the BGSU campus.
With the win, the Falcons improve to 15-2 overall and 4-0 in MAC play. BGSU has won 15 consecutive games after an 0-2 start to the season. The Zips fall to 6-11 and 1-3, respectively.
The win was BGSU's 100th since Lindsey Goldsberry, the Falcons' lone senior, joined the program. The Falcons are now 100-17 since the start of Goldsberry's freshman year, 2005-06.
Junior Niki McCoy and sophomore Tracy Pontius joined Prochaska in double digits in scoring. McCoy, in her first playing season at Bowling Green after transferring from Akron, had 13 points, while Pontius scored 12 points and had a game-high five steals. Four other Falcons scored at least six points.
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Kara Murphy and Ashley Veal led the Zips with eight points apiece. Murphy entered the game as the MAC's scoring leader, averaging 19.4 points per contest prior to Saturday, but was just 4-of-11 from the field against Goldsberry and the Falcon defense.
Leading by a slim 14-12 score, the Falcons proceeded to go on a 19-2 run, putting the game away for all intents and purposes. When the smoke cleared, the home team had a 33-14 lead with just over four minutes left in the first half, and the Zips never got closer than 17 points thereafter.
BGSU's lead never dropped below 23 points in the second half.
Both teams got off to a slow shooting start. Neither team scored for over two minutes, before Pontius spotted up and hit a three-pointer. Murphy connected at the 16:54 mark to get the Zips on the scoreboard, but Pontius hit a layup in transition to give the Falcons a 5-2 lead at the initial media timeout.
Veal got hot for the visitors, hitting back-to-back three-pointers. The first triple came immediately out of the media timeout, as the shot-clock buzzer sounded. Then, after a jumper by junior Tara Breske gave the Falcons a two-point lead, another Veal triple put the Zips up by an 8-7 count with 14:31 on the clock, prompting a timeout by Falcon head coach Curt Miller.
After that timeout, the Falcons scored five-straight points, all from the hands of Prochaska. The stellar sophomore knocked down a jumper, then took a Breske pass and hit a three-pointer to give BG a 12-8 lead.
Veal, who came into the game averaging 4.6 ppg, scored her seventh and eighth points of the day to cut the lead to 12-10. Veal, however, would not score another point in the game.
The teams traded baskets, with McCoy hitting a jumper off a Pontius feed, and UA's Victoria Arndt answering at the other end. Arndt's hoop came at the 11:59 mark, but the Zips then would go nearly seven minutes without a point and over eight minutes without a field goal.
The Falcons began to pull away, hitting back-to-back triples. Breske found freshman Jessica Slagle for the first trey, and Prochaska kicked the ball out to McCoy for the second. The home team had a 20-12 lead.
UA's Ayla Guzzardo got to the free-throw line and hit a pair of shots with 10:33 left in the half, but the Falcons then would score 13-straight points.
The 13-0 run began innocently enough, as Prochaska was fouled and hit two tosses. Neither team would score for a minute and a half, before a cross-court pass by Pontius found a wide-open Goldsberry in the left corner. The senior co-captain drained her resulting three-point try, putting the Falcons up by a 25-14 count and UA coach Jodi Kest took a timeout.
Goldsberry's triple made the Falcons 5-for-7 from long-range at that point in the game, with five different players sinking one apiece in the first 11-plus minutes.
McCoy got an offensive rebound and a putback, then got to the line and hit a pair of charity tosses for a 29-14 lead. Two more Prochaska FTs were followed by a Pontius jumper, off sophomore Jen Uhl's pass, and the Falcons were ahead by a 33-14 count with 4:17 left in the half.
Finally, the Zips' Natasha Williams connected on a jumper to break the scoring drought. But, another Prochaska three-pointer was followed by two free throws from freshman Maribeth Giese, and BG's lead was 38-16 with 1:36 left before halftime.
Giese hit a jumper in the final minute of the half, and Slagle's driving layup with seven seconds remaining gave the Brown and Orange a 44-18 lead as the teams headed into the lockerrooms.
In that first half, BGSU had a 17-0 advantage in points off turnovers.
The Zips scored the first points of the second half, as Kyle Baumgartner converted a three-point play 40 seconds into the period, but the Falcons then went on a 14-5 run to take a 34-point lead, the largest of the game.
That stretch began with six-straight points, starting with a McCoy layup. A layup by sophomore Chelsea Albert put the Falcons ahead by 30 points, 52-22, and after Murphy scored at the other end, McCoy answered for the home team.
Murphy scored on a putback, but BG scored the next six points, on two Albert free throws and back-to-back layups by Uhl. Prochaska assisted on the first layup, and Slagle drove the lane and fired a bounce pass to a wide-open Uhl for the second layup, giving BG a 60-36 lead with 12:37 left.
With Miller using his bench players liberally, Akron made a run, scoring eight of the game's next 10 points to get within 24 points, at 62-38. But, a Prochaska jumper began a 7-0 run for the home team, with Pontius getting a steal and a three-point play less than a minute later. Freshman Victoria McGowan's coast-to-coast layup put BG up by a 69-38 score at the eight-minute media timeout. Akron never got closer than 28 points over the remainder of the game.
Albert had eight points for the Falcons, with Slagle scoring seven and Giese and Uhl six apiece. The Brown and Orange had 17 assists as a team, with four players -- Goldsberry, Pontius, Prochaska and Uhl -- dishing out three each.
Breske and Prochaska had seven rebounds apiece to tie for team honors. For the Zips, Jolene Tamboue pulled down 12 boards in just 15 minutes, as UA hald a 43-38 advantage in that department.
The Falcons shot 44.3 percent from the field in the game, while holding UA to just a 31.1% success rate. At the free-throw line, the Falcons started the game by making 15-straight attempts, before ending the game with a 19-for-21 effort (90.5%). BG hit seven three-pointers to the Zips' five.
BGSU remains at home midweek, closing out a three-game homestand with a Wednesday (Jan. 21) game vs. the University at Buffalo. Tipoff is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at Anderson.
NOTES
* The Falcons held the Zips without a point for 6:45 during the team's first-half run ... Akron did not hit a field goal for 8:11 during that run.
* BGSU forced Akron into 22 turnovers, while committing just 10 themselves ... Falcon starters had a total of only two turnovers (and 11 assists) between them.
* The Falcons, as mentioned, now have a 15-game winning streak ... that is the fourth-longest active streak in the country, behind only Auburn, North Carolina and Connecticut ... by the time BGSU takes the court against Buffalo Wednesday, the Brown and Orange will rank at least third on that list, as Carolina hosts UConn on Monday night.
