Wednesday, March 13
Cleveland, OH
12:00 PM
Bowling Green State University
55
vs
53
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Western Michigan (second round)
Falcons Survive & Move On with 55-53 Win over WMU
March 13, 2013 | Women's Basketball
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FINAL STATISTICS: PDF | HTML
POSTGAME VIDEO: Jennifer Roos, Jill Stein & Miriam Justinger
POSTGAME AUDIO: Roos, Stein & Justinger
ADDITIONAL VIDEO: Roos (on-court interview) | Stein | Justinger *
BGSU-WMU PHOTO GALLERY: Courtesy Brad Phalin, BGSU Marketing & Communications
* courtesy MAC Digital Network
BGSU NOTES FOR THURSDAY'S CMU GAME | CMU NOTES FOR THURSDAY
With the win, the Falcons improve to 22-9 on the season and advance to the third round of the tournament. BGSU, the tourney's fifth seed, will take on fourth-seeded Central Michigan University on Thursday (March 14).
WMU, the ninth seed, sees the season come to an end with an 11-20 overall record.
Juniors Alexis Rogers and Jill Stein led the Falcons in scoring, with 11 points apiece. Rogers had nine of her points in the opening half, as the Brown and Orange surged to a 37-19 lead at the intermission.
Stein scored eight of BGSU's second-half points, making three of the team's six field goals after the break.
Senior Chrissy Steffen and freshman Bailey Cairnduff each had eight points for the Falcons, while freshman Miriam Justinger scored all six of her points in 44-second span in the second half.
For Western Michigan, the trio of Aurielle Anderson, Marquisha Harris and Miracle Woods scored 12 points apiece. Corie Buchanan rounded out the Broncos' double-figure scorers with 10 points.
Rogers and Harris each had nine rebounds on the day to lead their respective teams. The Falcons and Broncos tied, 36-36, in the rebounding department.
BGSU's halftime lead represented the largest of the game. Western held the Falcons to just two points over the first 11 minutes of the second period, however, getting back within six.
Justinger's scoring flurry helped the Falcons increase their advantage to double digits once again, as the freshman's free throws at the 5:31 mark put BG on top by a 49-39 count. But, the Broncos chipped away, eventually getting back within one possession on a pair of Harris charity tosses with 1:56 to go.
Western cut BG's lead to a single point, 54-53, on an Anderson layup with 45.2 seconds remaining. And, the Broncos forced a BGSU shot-clock violation on the ensuing possession to get the ball back with 14.0 seconds to go.
Western got the ball over midcourt and called a timeout with 10.0 seconds remaining. After the Broncos inbounded, though, the Falcons' trapping defense forced a double-dribble on Anderson, giving the ball back to BG with just 4.3 seconds left.
Before the Falcons could inbound the ball, Steffen was fouled. The senior hit her first free-throw try to give BG a two-point lead.
Steffen's second shot was no good, and Western Michigan came up with the rebound. But, as the Broncos raced downcourt, they lost possession of the ball, which rolled out of bounds as the final horn sounded.
BGSU shot 46.7 percent from the field in the first half, but the Falcons were just 6-of-25 (24.0%) in the second half. By contrast, WMU shot only 29.6% in the first half and 51.7% in the second.
For the game, the Broncos shot 41.1% from the floor to the Falcons' 36.4%.
Western led early, scoring on three of the first four possessions for a 6-2 advantage with 100 seconds gone. BG's lone bucket during that time came when Justinger found a cutting Rogers for a layup.
After Anderson's pull-up jumper gave the Broncos that 6-2 lead, though, the Falcons responded. Senior Danielle Havel was fouled on a drive and knocked down a pair of free throws. Moments later, junior point guard Jillian Halfhill came up with a defensive rebound, pushed the tempo and found Steffen in the left corner. Steffen's three-point try was on target, and with 16:43 to go before halftime, the Falcons had a 7-6 lead. BG would not trail again.
After a WMU miss, Rogers scored inside, and Steffen then came up with a nifty steal of a cross-court pass and headed in for a transition layup and an 11-6 BG lead.
A.J. Johnson responded with a three-pointer for the Broncos, but Halfhill got the ball inside to senior Allison Papenfuss for a layup. Buchanan answered with a layup of her own, but Steffen's long two-pointer, after a nice shot-fake, gave BG a 15-11 lead.
Rogers extended that lead to four points with a layup, and 30 seconds later, Stein scored inside to give the Falcons a six-point lead. With the shot clock winding down, Rogers took a Cairnduff pass and drained a three-point try for a 22-13 Falcon lead with 10:28 left in the period.
After Woods split two free throws, Rogers drove, drew a double team and flipped the ball to a wide-open Havel for a layup and a 24-14 lead with 8:48 on the clock.
Following that layup, the Falcons proceeded to go scoreless for nearly four and a half minutes. But, the BG defense held the Broncos to just two points during that span, and when Cairnduff dribbled around to the top of the arc and hit a long-range shot, the Brown and Orange had a 27-16 lead.
That Cairnduff shot was the start of a stretch of three-plus minutes which saw the Morley, Miich., native score eight points. After the Falcons forced Western into a shot-clock violation, Cairnduff was fouled and knocked down both free throws for a 29-16 lead.
Then, Halfhill stole the ball and pulled up for a transition jumper and a 31-16 lead, prompting a WMU timeout with 3:07 left in the half.
Stein split a pair of free throws, and after Woods scored inside, Cairnduff converted a second-straight three-pointer that barely moved the net. The Falcons had a 35-18 lead with 1:13 to go in the half.
Woods hit a free throw, but Papenfuss took a pass from junior Katrina Salinas and hit a layup with seven seconds left in the half.
The Broncos came right back with a transition layup, but it was ruled that the shot did not beat the buzzer, and BGSU took a 37-19 lead into the locker room.
The second half, though, was a different story. BGSU scored just two points in the first 11:03 of the period, as Western slowly but surely narrowed the gap to six points.
BG's lone points during that time came when Rogers grabbed an offensive rebound, found herself unguarded and drove to the hoop for a layup at the 14:42 mark. The Falcons began the second half by going 1-of-14 from the field and turning the ball over six times during that 11:03 span.
Finally, Stein got an offensive board, was fouled and hit both resulting free throws. Buchanan made a layup, but Stein made a baseline drive and converted a reverse layup, banking the ball high off the glass and through the hoop for a 43-35 BGSU lead.
Western cut that lead in half, though, on jumpers by Buchanan and Harris, but Justinger began her scoring barrage, with six points in that 44-second span.
First, the freshman took a long pass from Stein and hit a layup at the 6:15 mark. Then, after a miss by WMU and a defensive rebound by Stein, Halfhill's long pass found Justinger ahead of the pack for another layup, with 5:58 on the clock.
After another Western missed shot and another Stein rebound, Justinger was fouled on a layup try after receiving yet another long pass. The Sylvania, Ohio, native knocked down two free-throw tries, and BG's lead was back to double digits, 49-39, with 5:31 remaining.
The Broncos scored six of the next seven points, though, to pull within five points with 4:40 to go. Halfhill fed Stein for a layup in traffic and a 52-45 lead, but Woods got her team within five once again with a layup at the 3:07 mark.
Rogers tossed the ball inside to Stein for a short jumper and a 54-47 advantage, but Woods scored again for the Broncos. Two Harris free throws cut BG's lead to just three points, 54-51, with 1:56 left.
BG missed a shot on the next possession, but Stein blocked a layup try by Buchanan, and Steffen rebounded the ball with 1:25 on the clock.
The Falcons were whistled for a shot-clock violation with 55.7 seconds to go, giving the ball back to the Broncos. Anderson hit her layup with 45.2 seconds left, setting the stage for the frantic finish.
When WMU got the ball back in the final seconds, trailing by a 54-53 count, the score was exactly the same as in the teams' regular-season meeting in Kalamazoo, Mich., on Feb. 10. That day, Buchanan scored with 4.6 seconds to go to give her team the win. On Wednesday, however, BG came up with the defensive stop en route to victory.
The Falcons had first-half advantages of 18-8 in points in the paint and 14-0 in points off turnovers, but the Broncos reversed those advantages in the second period, with a 20-12 margin in points in the paint as well as a 12-1 points-off-turnovers lead. BG held slight edges in each category (30-28 points in paint, 15-12 points off turnovers) for the game.
The BGSU-CMU game will begin at noon on Thursday at Quicken Loans. The winner will advance to Friday's (March 15) semifinal round to meet the top-seeded University of Toledo.
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