Soaring Falcons Look To Take Down Cardinals Wednesday

Bowling Green Falcons (11-11, 5-4 MAC) at Ball State Cardinals (12-9, 4-5 MAC)
Feb. 8, 2012 • 7 p.m. • Muncie, Ind. • Worthen Arena (11,500)
Radio: Falcon Radio Network • Todd Walker (Play-by-Play)
Television: BGSU Sportslink
Live Stats: http://www.bgsufalcons.com
Live Video: http://www.mac-sports.com
Live Audio: Stretch Internet
Complete Game Notes (.pdf)
PURCHASE TICKETS

QUICK HITS
* BGSU goes for its first three-game winning streak of the year Wednesday at Ball State. At 5-4 in league play, the Falcons have won two of their past three road games. Ball State, currently on a four game losing streak, is 4-5 in conference play and has lost three straight home games after starting 7-0 at home.
* BGSU is 40-34 in 74 meetings all-time against Ball State. The Falcons won last year's game at home by one point but lost two years ago in Muncie, 64-59.
* Scott Thomas leads the MAC and ranks ninth in the country with 2.5 steals per game. His 3.1 steals per contest are third-best in the country against league competition and he has at least one steal in every game this year.
* Jordon Crawford and Thomas rank 10th and 11th on BGSU's all-time assist list. Crawford has 287 and Thomas is just behind at 284.
* BGSU tied a season-low with nine turnovers vs. Northern Illinois.
* The Falcons have held their last two opponents to less than 50 points and their last four opponents below 40 percent shooting.
* BGSU's 25-point halftime lead over Northern Illinois was the largest since leading Valparaiso 49-24 at the half on Feb. 20, 2010.
* Crawford leads the MAC in assists in conference play (6.2 per game) and has at least three assists in 16 consecutive games.
* Bowling Green has shot 50 percent or better in a game nine times this year, including five of the last nine contests. The Falcons are 6-3 when reaching that percentage.
* Cam Black has had at least one block in nine straight games and ranks third in the MAC in that category. His 35 blocks this year are one shy of the top 10 single seasons in school history.
* Dee Brown snapped a string of eight straight double-figure scoring games with six points against Northern Illinois. He is closing in on 1,000 career points with 934.

SOARING FALCONS LOOK TO TAKE DOWN CARDINALS
Coming off of back-to-back 20-point wins over Western Michigan and Northern Illinois, Bowling Green has hopes for its first three-game winning streak of the year on the road at Ball State. The Falcons returned to .500 overall with a 65-40 win over Northern Illinois Saturday and moved to 5-4 in Mid-American Conference play. Ball State has lost four straight to fall to 12-9 on the year and 4-5 in conference play. The Cardinals have also lost three straight home games after winning their first seven at Worthen Arena.

THE SERIES
Bowling Green is 40-34 all-time against Ball State and head coach Louis Orr is 3-1 in his five-year BGSU tenure against the Cardinals. Last year, Bowling Green beat Ball State 65-64 at home but Ball State won two years ago in Muncie, 64-59.

SCOUTING BALL STATE
Despite losing four straight, Ball State is one of the favorites to win the Mid-American Conference West Division. The Cardinals are led by senior point guard Randy Davis and senior forward Jarrod Jones. Davis leads the country with a 3.81 assist/turnover ratio and averages 5.6 assists per game. Jones is in the top 100 in the country in scoring (16.8 points), rebounding (8.7 boards), and field goal percentage (52.5 percent). The Cardinals are among the nation's leaders defensively, giving up just 59.5 points per game. Ball State, however, is shooting only 31.4 percent from three-point range. Head coach Billy Taylor is 66-78 in his fifth season with the Cardinals and has a career mark of 147-147 with five seasons leading Lehigh.

LAST GAME: FALCONS BLOW OUT NORTHERN ILLINOIS
Bowling Green jumped out to an 18-1 lead and never looked back, defeating Northern Illinois 65-40 Saturday. The Falcons led 41-16 at the half, holding the Huskies to just 24 percent shooting in the first 20 minutes. Scott Thomas scored all of his 14 points in the first half and added nine rebounds, three assists, two steals and a blocked shot. Jordon Crawford had 15 points, six assists and two steals, while Torian Oglesby came off the bench for six points and seven rebounds. Bowling Green shot 49 percent for the game and tied its season-best with only nine turnovers.

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, just one game behind Kent State for one of the four byes. If the MAC Tournament were to start today, Bowling Green would be the No. 6 seed and would host No. 11 seed Toledo 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 and second in three-point percentage. The Falcons have shot at least 50 percent from the floor in five of the nine conference contests and are shooting 47.7 percent in total, behind only Akron at 48.3 percent and Kent State at 48.0 percent. Bowling Green is also shooting 38.6 percent from three-point range, behind just Akron at 40.5 percent.

TORCHING THE NETS IN THE LONG TERM
Bowling Green is 35-8 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 nine times again and is 6-3 when doing so, including all four MAC wins. The last BGSU team to shoot 50 percent more than nine times in a season was the 2004-05 squad that did it 14 times.

FIRST HALF ROAD WOES
Bowling Green is just 3-8 on the road this year, but most of the team's struggles have come in the first half. The Falcons have led at the half just once (a two-point lead at Western Michigan) but have outscored their opponent in the second half eight times. In fact, Bowling Green trails by an average of 6.5 points at the break but has outscored its opponents by 5.3 points in the second half. BGSU average 26.4 first-half points on the road and 39.2 second-half points.

STAT STUFFER
While Scott Thomas has proven to be the team's most consistent scoring threat this year, he will also go down as one of the most versatile players in program history. Earlier this year, he tied the program record with eight steals in one game and currently has 181 for his career, fourth all-time at Bowling Green. Thomas also ranks ninth in school history with 128 career three-pointers, needs three assists to break into the top 10, and has over 600 career rebounds. He went over 1,000 career points with a three-pointer early against Duquesne and is the only player in program history with 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, 150 steals and 100 three-pointers in a career.

NO STREAKING HERE
Bowling Green has not won or lost more than two games in a row all season. The Falcons have two two-game winning streaks (beating Austin Peay and Detroit on consecutive nights and the current streak of wins over Western Michigan and Northern Illinois) and two two-game losing streaks (the first against Valparaiso and Michigan State and the second against Akron and Kent State).

SO THAT'S WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO WIN THERE
All three of Bowling Green's 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 two conference road victories (Miami and Western Michigan)

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 fourth in the conference and, once again, Scott Thomas and Jordon Crawford are leading the way individually. The duo has combined for 86 steals 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 fourth in BGSU history with 181 career steals and Crawford is now over the century mark with 110. Thomas ranks ninth in the country with 2.5 steals per game.

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 56-of-69 shots on the year, shooting 81.2 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 35-of-41 shots on the road, for an 85.4 field-goal percentage away from the Stroh Center.

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 11.2 points per game and has started 20-of-22 contests.

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 36-of-95 three-pointers (37.9 percent) and 39-of-55 free-throws (70.9 percent).

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 five games, Calhoun is averaging 15.0 points per game, while shooting 55.1 percent from the floor and grabbing 6.2 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.

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 20-of-22 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 also has a chance to 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 eight regular season games remaining and a minimum of one MAC Tournament game, Brown needs to average 7.3 points through the remainder of the year to reach that total as he sits at 934 career points.

A NEW HOLIDAY TRADITION
BGSU men's basketball played on New Year's Day for the second consecutive season as the Falcons lost to Texas San Antonio in overtime, 86-79. Bowling Green is 4-2 all-time when breaking in the New Year and the Falcons were just one of eight NCAA Division I programs to play on New Year's Day in each of the past two seasons (joining Syracuse, DePaul, Marquette, Southern Illinois, Illinois State, Northern Iowa, and Evansville).

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' 39 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 equaled that win total but are just 2-6 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 8-3 (.727) 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 six 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 and then again Jan. 28 at Eastern Michigan. The Falcons have two more STO games -- Saturday against Northern Illinois and Feb. 25 at home against Kent State.

THOMAS NAMED MAC PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Scott Thomas was named MAC East Division Player of the Week on Nov. 28 after guiding the Falcons to a 3-1 week, including a win over Temple. Thomas scored in double-figures in all four games, averaging 12.0 points and 5.8 rebounds per contest. He also had seven assists, nine steals, and two blocked shots.

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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