Falcons Head To SeaGate Centre For MAC Tournament

Complete Game Notes (.pdf)
MAC Tournament Bracket (.pdf)

Bowling Green, Ohio - Bowling Green kept its season alive and Head Coach Denise Van De Walle picked up her 500th career win as the Falcons, seeded No. 11, upset No. 6 seed and rival Toledo in the first round of the MAC Tournament. The victory sent the Falcons on to the MAC Tournament quarterfinals for the sixth year in a row, where No. 3 seed Miami (Ohio) awaits. The RedHawks have been Bowling Green twice this year already so it will be an uphill climb but with the winningest coach in MAC history on their side, the Falcons always have a shot.

HEAD-TO-HEAD
Miami has had a leg up in both head-to-head contests this year, winning the first match in three sets and the second in four, but the Falcons have been extremely competitive in both matches. In the three set sweep, Miami had to go beyond 25 points in two of the sets in a 26-24, 28-26, 25-13 win. In the RedHawks' four-set victory, Bowling Green won the opening set and looked to be in control before a 17-25, 25-18, 25-21, 25-19 loss. Miami holds a 38-24 lead in the all-time series and 6-3 in neutral site contests. The two teams have not met in the MAC Tournament since the Falcons defeated Miami in the 1999 quarterfinals in five sets and Bowling Green is 2-1 in three meetings between the programs in the MAC Tournament.

SCOUTING MIAMI
Miami is a highly efficient offensive team, hitting .222 on the season, third-best in the MAC. The RedHawks haven't excelled in any other category but they also don't have a glaring weaknesses, ranking in the middle of the conference in just about every other statistic. Michelle Metzler is a key player at the net, ranking sixth in the conference in attack percentage at .306 and seventh in blocks at 0.89 per set. Carolyn Condit is the second-most tenured coach in the MAC (just one year behind BG coach Denise Van De Walle) with a record of 470-344 at Miami and 569-424 overall.

THE VICTORY MARCH
Heading into 2009, the Bowling Green volleyball team needed 13 wins for Denise Van De Walle to pick up the 500th of her career, a number that seemed to be a certainty since the Falcons had won 20 or more in each of the previous three seasons. But after an 11-match losing streak midway through the year, things looked bleak but Van De Walle may have done the best coaching job of her career. The team closed the regular season by going 5-5 and then upset rival Toledo in the opening round of the MAC Tournament to give Van De Walle the 500th win of her career. She enters the match against Miami with a record of 500-342 in 27 years at Bowling Green and is the first coach in MAC history to reach that milestone. She is one of the 30 active winningest coaches in the country.

QUEENS OF THE FIVE-SET MATCH
Bowling Green has thrived on five-set matches recently and the Falcons have won three such matches in a 10-day stretch capped off with the win at Toledo in the MAC Tournament quarterfinals. In fact, five of the team's past six wins have come in five-set thrillers. The Falcons beat Duquesne early in the year and then lost five-setters to Cleveland State and Akron. Since then, Bowling Green has beaten Eastern Michigan, Ball State, Northern Illinois, Kent State, and Toledo in five sets. In fact, in two of those matches, the Falcons came back from two sets down. A year ago, Bowling Green was even better, going 9-1 in five-set matches and the Falcons were 5-1 in 2007. The Falcons have not had a losing record in five-set matches since 2004.

Bowling Green's Record In Five-Set Matches Since 2005
2009 6-2
2008 9-1
2007 5-1
2006 2-2
2005 2-2

DEFENDING THE HOUSE THAT ROARS
In 2007 and 2008, Bowling Green went 22-3 in Anderson Arena and the Falcons held opponents to just a .198 attack percentage in 12 matches a year ago. But Bowling Green went just 4-9 in "The House That Roars" in 2009 and allowed opponents to hit .255. The Falcons finished with a losing record in Anderson Arena for the first time since 2002.

THE MAC TOURNAMENT
A year ago, Bowling Green defeated Buffalo and Central Michigan on the way to the MAC Tournament semifinals. The Falcons have won at least one match in the conference tournament in five of the past six seasons (including 2009) but has won just one tournament title (1991). In all, Bowling Green is 14-17 in MAC Tournaments in program history. The Falcons have reached the quarterfinals of the conference tournament in each of the past six seasons.

IN BOWLING, DOMEK WOULD HAVE FOUR PERFECT GAMES
Senior Corey Domek had the ninth 20+ kill match of her career when she posted 20 in the team's MAC Tournament win over Toledo. With her sixth kill in that match, Domek posted 300 for the season, making her the first player in program history to post 300 or more kills in a season four times. As a freshman, she posted 313 and then added 390 as a sophomore. She topped that with 396 as a junior and now has 314. In all, she ranks fourth in program history with 1,413 career kills, needing 48 to tie Lisa Mika (1988-91) for third and 49 to tie Carlyn Esslinger (1992-95) for second.

WE CAN DIG THAT
In volleyball, 30 digs in a match is considered a milestone number. Libero Alex Zlabis had never posted more than 27 until the final weekend of the 2009 regular season. She broke through with a gigantic 33-dig match against Kent State in the next-to-last match, but she wasn't done there. Zlabis again topped the 30-dig plateau by picking up 31 in the team's MAC Tournament win over Toledo. She has been steadily climbing the league leaders in digs and has now moved into fifth place in the conference with 3.99 digs per set.

THE NEMESIS DOES IT AGAIN
Just as Lex Luthor was Superman's nemesis, Shari Luther has been a nemesis to opponents this year. Even if they aren't related (OK, we realize the last names aren't even spelled the same and Lex Luthor is fictional), Luther is causing headaches for opponents the way Luthor and his cryptonite must have caused for Superman. She received her second MAC East Offensive Player of the Week after posting 29 kills and nine blocks in matches against Ball State and Toledo. She received her first Player of the Week award after being named Most Valuable Player at the Duquesne/Robert Morris Tournament, averaging 2.8 kills per set and a team-best .430 attack percentage on the weekend. She also had a team-high 13 blocks and served up three aces. On the year, she leads the MAC in attack percentage at .364 (ranking 21st in the country) and leads the team in kills, blocks, and points.

ACTION JACKSON, THE DOUBLE THREAT
Senior Kaitlin Jackson has been a versatile player throughout her career with the Falcons. In 2009, she has become an even more dynamic piece of the BGSU puzzle, recording the first eight double-doubles of her career. She picked up the first two at the Duquesne/Robert Morris Tournament and continued to produce in New Orleans, coming up one kill short of another double-double against Texas Tech. At the Ohio State Sports Imports Classic, she had 12 kills and 10 digs against Cleveland State for her third double-double of the season and then posted 10 kills and 15 digs against Akron. In back-to-back matches, she totaled a combined 33 kills and 34 digs to rack up double-doubles against Eastern and Central Michigan. She then posted a career-high 24 kills and added 11 digs against Kent State before picking up her most recent double-double, an 11-kill, 17-dig performance against Toledo in the first round of the MAC Tournament. She ranks among the top four on the team in kills, attack percentage, aces, serve percentage, digs, blocks, and points.

WHO'S THAT KID?
Freshman setter Allison Kearney is one member of a highly touted class at Bowling Green. In her first collegiate weekend, she lived up to the billing. Kearney averaged 11.5 assists per set, led the team with nine aces and added 2.5 digs per set. She has been named to all-tournament teams at both the Duquesne/Robert Morris Invitational and the Best Western Falcon Plaza Invitational. On the year, she is averaging 10.27 assists per set (which ranks fourth in the MAC), ranks seventh in the league in aces at 0.29 per set and is third on the team at 2.36 digs per set. Earlier this year, she set a career high with 60 assists in a win over Kent State.

THE COMEBACK
Bowling Green's dramatic win over Northern Illinois a week ago was one of the most improbable turn-arounds in program history with a script unlike any match Head Coach Denise Van De Walle could remember in her 27 years. BG lost the opening set and was then defeated 25-5 in the second set. The Falcons came back and dominated the final three sets to win the match. Since the NCAA adopted 25-point sets in 2007, Bowling Green had never won a match in which it lost a set worse than 25-13. The NCAA used 30-point rally scoring from 2001-07 and the Falcons only played two sets during that time frame in which the losing team did not reach double figures. In both of those matches, the team that won those lopsided sets (Bowling Green on both occasions) won the match. Prior to that time, the most comparable match may have come in 1999 when the Falcons lost the first two sets to Kent State (including 15-4 in the second) before rebounding to win in five.

HITTING THE BOOKS
Bowling Green has always stressed academics and Falcon volleyball has been a model of that philosophy. The 2008 BGSU volleyball team received the AVCA Academic Team Award for the ninth consecutive season, compiling a cumulative grade point average of 3.30 or better. The Falcons have the second longest streak in all of NCAA Division I and has received the award 10 times overall.

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