Falcons Face MAC-Leading Akron Zips Wednesday

Bowling Green Falcons (14-12, 7-5 MAC) at Akron Zips (19-8, 11-1 MAC)
Feb. 22, 2012 • 7 p.m. • Akron, Ohio • James A. Rhodes Arena (5,500)
Radio: Falcon Radio Network • Todd Walker (Play-by-Play)
Television: None
Live Stats: http://www.gozips.com
Live Video: http://www.mac-sports.com
Live Audio: Stretch Internet
Complete Game Notes (.pdf)
PURCHASE TICKETS

QUICK HITS
* BGSU and Akron play Wednesday night at 7 p.m. in James A. Rhodes Arena (otherwise known as the JAR). The Zips lead the MAC at 11-1 and Bowling Green is 7-5, sitting in fifth place.
* Bowling Green and Akron are all tied up at 24-24 in the all-time series. The Zips have won six straight contests over BGSU since the Falcons won at Akron on March 1, 2009.
* Scott Thomas remains at the top of the MAC and ranks ninth in the country with 2.6 steals per game. His 3.1 steals in conference games is fourth-most in the country.
* BGSU has at least eight steals in six straight games.
* BGSU is 5-1 in February, the most wins in a month since going 6-2 in January of 2011.
* Jordon Crawford has three double-digit assist games this year, the most in a season at BGSU since John Floyd had three in 2004-05.
* BGSU's 14 three-pointers against Morehead State was the most since the team made 14 in an 81-75 loss to Western Michigan on Jan. 3, 1998.
* The Falcons have had more steals than their opponent in six straight games and are 11-4 when doing so on the season.
* Thomas' 67 steals are the fifth-most in a single-season in BGSU history.
* Dee Brown has made 16 of his last 29 three-point attempts.
* With 19 points against Morehead State, Brown now has 991 career points.
* Cam Black's 39 blocked shots are the seventh-most in a single-season in BGSU history.
* Bowling Green's RPI of 158 is 87 spots higher than a year ago (third-largest increase in the MAC) and the highest for the program since the 2004-05 team ended the year at 103.

BGSU LOOKS FOR REVENGE AGAINST FIRST-PLACE AKRON
Bowling Green will look for a key Mid-American Conference win Wednesday night when the Falcons face Akron in James A. Rhodes Arena. Akron leads the MAC with an 11-1 league record but the Zips needed a buzzer beater to defeat the Falcons 56-55 the first time the two teams met this year. Sitting in fifth place in the MAC, BGSU trails Ohio by one game and both Buffalo and Kent State by two games in the race for one of the four bye spots in the MAC Tournament.

THE SERIES
With six consecutive victories, Akron has evened the all-time series with Bowling Green at 24-24. The Falcons have lost two in a row at James A. Rhodes Arena since defeating Akron on March 1, 2009. The Zips posted a 56-55 win in the Stroh Center earlier this year, scoring on a jumper in the last second of play to get the win.

SCOUTING AKRON
Akron is 19-8 on the year, including a record of 11-1 in Mid-American Conference play. The Zips have a two-game lead in the league standings for the overall No. 1 seed in the MAC Tournament. Amazingly, nobody on the team averages more than 10.3 points per game but Akron has seven players averaging at least 7.5 points per contest. Zeke Marshall leads the way at 10.3 points and has 84 blocked shots, easily the most in the MAC. Akron excels on the perimter, holding opponents to 28.6 percent three-point shooting, while making 37.3 percent of its own three-pointers. Head coach Keith Dambrot is 181-83 in eight seasons at Akron and 289-153 in 14 seasons as a head coach.

LAST GAME: FALCONS BOMB MOREHEAD STATE, 73-60
Bowling Green knocked down 14 three-pointers and the Falcons rolled past Morehead State in the annual Sears BracketBusters game, 73-60, Saturday afternoon. Scott Thomas made a career-high eight three-pointers, just one shy of the school record, and scored a career-high 28 points. The team's 14 three-pointers were the most in 14 years. Dee Brown added 19 points on 3-of-5 three-pointers, while Jordon Crawford made 3-of-4 three-pointers and had 12 assists and three steals.

THE MAC TOURNAMENT
A new format for the MAC Tournament changes the bracket and seeding this year. The teams with the top two records in the league (regardless of division) will earn a double-bye into the semifinals and the next two best records will earn a bye to the quarterfinals. Teams seeded fifth through eighth will host a first-round game and teams seeded ninth through 12th will play on the road in the first round. Currently, the Falcons are in fifth place, one game behind Ohio and one game ahead of Eastern Michigan. If the MAC Tournament were to start today, the Falcons would earn the No. 5 seed and would host Northern Illinois in the first round.

ONE OF THE BEST
With an assist against Ohio, Scott Thomas moved into 10th place all-time at BGSU in career assists. He already ranks third in career steals and sixth in career three-pointers. With 11 more rebounds, he will move into the top 10 in that category as well. He is one of only eight players ever to rank in the top 10 in BGSU history in three different statistical categories.

TORCHING THE NETS
Offensively, Bowling Green has played well in Mid-American Conference play, ranking third in the league in field goal percentage. The Falcons have shot at least 50 percent from the floor in five of the 12 conference contests and are shooting 45.7 percent in total, behind only Akron at 46.8 percent and Buffalo at 45.8 percent.

TORCHING THE NETS IN THE LONG TERM
Bowling Green is 36-8 in head coach Louis Orr's five years when making at least half of its shots. A year ago, the Falcons reached 50 percent nine times and went 8-1 when doing so. This year, BGSU has shot 50 percent in a game 10 times and is 7-3 when doing so, including four MAC wins. The last BGSU team to shoot 50 percent more than 10 times in a season was the 2004-05 squad that did it 14 times.

AVOIDING LOSING STREAKS
Bowling Green had a four-game winning streak snapped last Wednesday night at Ohio, but that was the first time BGSU had either won or lost more than two in a row all year. Bowling Green has not gone a full season without at least one three-game losing streak since the 2004-05 team posted three two-game losing streaks but never lost more than that in a row.

SO THAT'S WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO WIN THERE
Three of Bowling Green's four road wins this year have come in locations in which the Falcons had not won since at least 2002. BGSU had one non-conference road win (against FIU) and has posted three conference road victories (Miami, Western Michigan, and Ball State), equaling last year's MAC road win total.

WHAT A STEAL
Over the course of the past two seasons, Bowling Green has been one of the top teams in the Mid-American Conference in steals, leading the conference in that category a year ago. This year, the team is third in the conference and, once again, Scott Thomas and Jordon Crawford are leading the way individually. No other duo in the MAC has combined for the 109 steals those two have and Thomas tied the school record with eight against Miami. In fact, he leads the MAC in steals overall and in steals in league games only. He is tied for third in BGSU history with 193 career steals and Crawford is now over the century mark with 121. Thomas ranks ninth in the country with 2.6 steals per game.

A RARE COMBINATION
With 11 more rebounds, Scott Thomas will move into some rare air in the Mid-American Conference. Already ranking in the top 10 in BGSU history in assists, he will become just the fourth player at any MAC school to rank in the top 10 in their school's history in those two categories, joining Miami's Ron Harper and Chet Mason, and Ball State's Bonzi Wells.

HEIGHT IS OVERRATED
At 5-feet-6, junior point guard Jordon Crawford is the fourth-shortest player in NCAA Division I basketball. Green Bay's Eric Valentin measures in as the shortest player at 5-4, while Denver's Charles Webb and George Washington's Malik Tonkins are both 5-5. None of those players have the type of impact that Crawford has on the Falcons. In fact, Crawford's 25 points against Miami are more than the other three have combined to score all season. He is third on the team with 10.7 points per game and has started 24-of-26 contests.

THE RECORD SETTER
Senior forward Torian Oglesby set an NCAA Division I record by making 26 consecutive field goal attempts, a streak that ended with a first-half miss against Ohio. Despite the miss, Oglesby has made 63-of-78 shots on the year, shooting 80.8 percent. The old record of 25 consecutive field goal attempts without a miss was set by Ray Voelkel of American University in 1978, a mark which stood for 33 years. As if all of that is not remarkable enough, Oglesby has made 37-of-44 shots on the road, for an 84.1 field-goal percentage away from the Stroh Center.

THE BIG APOSTROPHE
Junior A'uston Calhoun has turned his game up as the 2011-12 season has worn on. He averaged just 2.5 points in the first two games of the season, improved to 12.4 points over the next five, and then averaged 14.3 in the next ten. Over the past eight games, Calhoun is averaging 14.6 points per game, while shooting 52.6 percent from the floor and grabbing 6.6 rebounds per contest.

THE STROH CENTER
BGSU played its first regular season game ever in the Stroh Center against Howard. After 51 years in venerable Anderson Arena, the Falcons opened one of the newest facilities in the country.

IMPROVING EFFICIENCY
While Scott Thomas does just about everything on the floor for the Falcons, the area in which he most needed to improve coming into the 2011-12 season was shooting from three-point range and the free-throw line. A year ago, Thomas shot 29 percent on three-pointers and 59 percent from the charity line. This year, he has made 48-of-127 three-pointers (37.8 percent) and 44-of-64 free-throws (68.8 percent). He made eight three-pointers in the team's BracketBusters win over Morehead State, the most since Jay Larranaga set the school record with nine in a 103-78 win over Akron on Feb. 8, 1997.

DOWN LOW
Head coach Louis Orr's philosophy is always to play inside-out and the Falcons have done that well during his tenure. This year, the Falcons have scored at least 20 points in the paint in 24-of-26 games with a season-high 58 against Malone. In fact, the 58 points in the paint represents the most in a game in Orr's tenure. BGSU had scored at least 30 points in the paint in seven consecutive games before being held to 16 at Eastern Michigan. In 2009-10 and 2010-11, the Falcons scored 20 or more points in the paint in 57-of-63 games.

1,000 POINT SCORERS
With a three-pointer against Duquesne, Scott Thomas became the 38th player in program history to score 1,000 career points. Senior Dee Brown should also reach 1,000 points this year, which would be just the seventh time in school history that two players have reached the milestone in the same year. Considering four regular season games remaining and a minimum of one MAC Tournament game, Brown needs to average just 1.8 points through the remainder of the year to reach that total as he sits at 991 career points.

DEFENSE WINS
Over the course of the past three years, Bowling Green has held its opponent to 45 percent shooting or worse in 34 of the Falcons' 42 wins. A year ago, Bowling Green went just 2-12 when an opponent shot at least 45 percent, posting victories against only Manhattan (48.9 percent shooting) and Ohio (45.8 percent). This year, the Falcons have already surpassed that win total and are 5-6 when an opponent shoots over 45 percent. Bowling Green actually won for the first time in Louis Orr's tenure when a team shot 50 percent as Austin Peay scored at a 51 percent clip, but the Falcons won 82-72.

THE NEW HOUSE
Anderson Arena provided BGSU with an excellent home court advantage as the Falcons went 466-190 (.710) all-time in The House That Roars. Bowling Green will attempt to build a new home court advantage after going 10-5 in Anderson Arena a year ago. This year, the Falcons are 10-3 (.769) in the Stroh Center, the team's best home mark since the 2004-05 team went 12-3.

PARKER/HOLMES SIGN WITH THE FALCONS
Louis Orr announced the signing of Spencer Parker and Richaun Holmes during this year's early signing period. Parker is from West Bloomfield, Mich. and is playing for Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, Va. this year. He will have four years of eligibility remaining. Holmes is from Lockport, Ill. and is playing this year at Moraine Community College. As a full qualifier out of high school, he will transfer to Bowling Green and be able to play immediately with three years of eligibility remaining.

FALCONS TO PLAY ON REGIONAL/NATIONAL TELEVISION
BGSU will play a minimum of seven games on ESPNU, SportsTime Ohio, or the Big Ten Network this year. The Falcons played on ESPNU at Georgia on Nov. 13 and then played on the Big Ten Network Dec. 17 at Michigan State. The Falcons also played on STO on Jan. 7 against Ohio in the first MAC game in the Stroh Center, again Jan. 28 at Eastern Michigan, and then on Feb. 4 against Northern Illinois. The Falcons have two more STO games -- Feb. 25 at home against Kent State and March 3 at Buffalo.

FALCONS EARN MAC PLAYER OF THE WEEK AWARDS
Scott Thomas and A'uston Calhoun have each earned Mid-American Conference East Division Player of the Week awards. Thomas won the award Nov. 28 after averaging 12.0 points and 5.8 rebounds in a 3-1 week. Calhoun received the award on Feb. 13 after averaging 23.5 points and 10.5 rebounds in wins over Ball State and Toledo.

FIRST TEAM ALL-STATE
Bowling Green has brought in an Associated Press Division I First Team Ohio All-State player for three consecutive years. Junior Luke Kraus was named first team all-state at Findlay High School in 2008-09. Redshirt freshman Anthony Henderson earned the honor at Toledo Start High School in 2009-10 and Chauncey Orr was named to the team from Bowling Green High School in 2010-11. BGSU is the only school in the country with three players from the AP Division I First Team Ohio All-State teams from the past three years on the roster. Miami (Ohio) and Ohio State each has two.

FALCONS PICKED SIXTH
Bowling Green was picked to finish sixth in the Mid-American Conference East Division in the preseason media poll. Defending MAC champion Kent State was selected to win the East while Western Michigan was selected to win the West.

MAC Preseason Media Poll
East Division - 1. Kent State (132 points/16 first-place votes), 2. Akron (104 points/8 first-place votes), 3. Ohio (94 points), 4. Miami (80 points), 5. Buffalo (62 points), 6. Bowling Green (32 points)
West Division - 1. Western Michigan (128 points/14 first-place votes), 2. Ball State (111 points/9 first-place votes), 3. Central Michigan (92 points/1 first-place vote), 4. Toledo (76 points), 5. Northern Illinois (59 points), 6. Eastern Michigan (38 points)
Tournament Champion - Kent State 12, Akron 6, Ball State 3, Western Michigan 2, Central Michigan 1

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