Falcons Fighting To Stay In Race For Bye Saturday

Bowling Green Falcons (14-13, 7-6 MAC) vs. Kent St. Golden Flashes (19-8, 9-4 MAC)
Feb. 25, 2012 • 6 p.m. • Bowling Green, Ohio • Stroh Center (4,347)
Radio: Falcon Radio Network • Todd Walker (Play-by-Play)/Kirk Cowan (Color)
Television: SportsTime Ohio • Michael Reghi (Play-by-Play)/Steve Mix (Color)
Live Stats: http://www.BGSUFalcons.com
Live Video: America One Network
Live Audio: Stretch Internet
Complete Game Notes (.pdf)
PURCHASE TICKETS

QUICK HITS
* BGSU hosts Kent State Saturday at 6 p.m. in the Stroh Center in a game televised on SportsTime Ohio. Kent State is tied for second in the league standings at 9-4, while Bowling Green is tied for fifth at 7-6.
* Kent State holds an 81-66 advantage in the all-time series and has won four in a row. The Golden Flashes have won the last two meetings in Bowling Green.
* Scott Thomas remains at the top of the MAC and ranks ninth in the country with 2.6 steals per game. His 3.0 steals in conference games is fourth-most in the country.
* Thomas has at least one steal in every game this year.
* BGSU has at least seven steals in seven straight games.
* BGSU is 5-2 in February, the most wins in a month since going 6-2 in January of 2011.
* The Falcons have had more steals than their opponent in seven straight games and are 11-5 when doing so on the season.
* Thomas' 69 steals are the fifth-most in a single-season in BGSU history.
* Dee Brown has made 17 of his last 34 three-point attempts.
* With 11 points against Akron, Brown reached 1,000 for his career and has 1,002. He is the second Falcon (joining Thomas) to reach that milestone this year.
* Cam Black's 40 blocked shots are tied for the sixth-most in a single-season in BGSU history.
* Thomas needs eight rebounds to move into the top 10 in Bowling Green history in career boards.
* Bowling Green is facing a third consecutive league opponent looking for its 20th win of the season.
* 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.

FALCONS STILL FIGHTING FOR BYE SATURDAY
Bowling Green and Kent State compete Saturday in the Stroh Center with a lot on the line. In a game televised on SportsTime Ohio, Kent State is looking to sew up a bye to at least the MAC Tournament quarterfinals, while BGSU is trying to get back into the hunt for one of those coveted spots. At 7-6, the Falcons are two games behind three teams jockeying for position.

THE SERIES
Kent State has won four consecutive meetings against Bowling Green and hold an 81-66 advantage in the all-time series. The Golden Flashes have won two in a row in Bowling Green and posted a wild 92-87 win in Kent earlier this year. The Falcons scored 60 second-half points in that game but it was not enough to overcome a halftime deficit. Kent State has won each of the past two meetings in Bowling Green by six points each.

SCOUTING KENT STATE
Kent State enters Saturday's game at 19-8 overall and 9-4 in league play but the Golden Flashes have not been playing their best basketball of the year. Kent State has lost two in a row, including a 62-60 loss at Miami Tuesday night. Despite that, the Golden Flashes are one of the best in the league in taking care of the basketball, leading the league in assist/turnover ratio and ranking second in turnover margin, while picking up 8.4 steals per contest. Defending MAC Player of the Year Justin Greene leads the team with 13.6 points and 6.4 rebounds. Kent State won the first meeting between the two programs this year, 92-87, building an 18-point halftime lead and hanging on after a furious rally by the Falcons. Head coach Rob Senderoff is in his first year as head coach of the program with a record of 19-8.

LAST GAME: MAC LEADER AKRON HANGS ON TO BEAT BGSU
Bowling Green battled back from a 12-point deficit to get within three with two minutes to play but the Zips made free-throws down the stretch and hung on for a 79-68 win Wednesday night at James A. Rhodes Arena. A'uston Calhoun had 18 points and seven rebounds to lead Bowling Green and Dee Brown reached 1,000 career points by adding 11. Jordon Crawford had 13 points and three assists, while Scott Thomas finished with nine points, seven assists, three rebounds and two 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 tied with Eastern Michigan for fifth place, two games behind Ohio, Kent State, and Buffalo for second. If the MAC Tournament were to start today, the Falcons would earn the No. 6 seed and would host Central Michigan in the first round.

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 13 conference contests and are shooting 46.3 percent in total, behind only Akron at 48.4 percent and Kent State at 48.2 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.

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 eight 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.

AVOIDING LOSING STREAKS
Bowling Green had a four-game winning streak snapped 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.

A RARE COMBINATION
With eight 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.

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 113 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 third in BGSU history with 195 career steals and Crawford is now over the century mark with 123. Thomas ranks ninth in the country with 2.6 steals per game.

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 10.8 points per game and has started 25-of-27 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 64-of-82 shots on the year, shooting 78.0 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.

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 14.9 points per game, while shooting 53.2 percent from the floor and grabbing 6.6 rebounds per contest.

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 25-of-27 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.

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 49-of-131 three-pointers (37.4 percent) and 46-of-67 free-throws (68.7 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.

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. Dee Brown followed with a long jumper at Akron to become the 39th to reach that milestone. The duo is just the seventh in school history to score 1,000 career points in the same season.

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 5-7 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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