Wednesday, March 6
Kent, OH
7:00 PM
Bowling Green State University
51
at
43
Kent State
Falcons Down KSU, 51-43, for 20th Win of Season
March 06, 2013 | Women's Basketball
BGSU faces the Golden Flashes again on Saturday
With the win, the Falcons improve to 20-9 on the season, and BGSU finishes MAC play with an 11-5 record. BGSU has earned the fifth seed for the MAC Tournament, and will host KSU in first-round action on Saturday afternoon (March 9) at the Stroh Center. Saturday's game will begin at 1:00 p.m.
LINKS
FINAL STATISTICS: HTML | PDF
POSTGAME AUDIO: Jennifer Roos
THE BRACKET: 2013 MAC Tournament bracket
The Golden Flashes drop to 3-26 and 1-15, respectively. KSU is the 12th seed for the league tournament.
The Falcons finished the regular season in second place in the MAC's East Division, one game behind Akron. BG had won eight-straight divisional titles prior to 2013.
While that streak came to an end, however, another one continues. The Falcons' have won 20 games for the 10th consecutive season, extending the program's MAC-record streak.
Senior Chrissy Steffen led the Falcons with 13 points on Wednesday night, while freshman Miriam Justinger scored nine and junior Jill Stein eight.
Redshirt junior Alexis Rogers scored seven points, while true junior Jillian Halfhil had six points and led the Falcons with nine rebounds and five assists. Steffen pulled down eight rebounds as BGSU had a 42-35 advantage on the boards.
The first half saw the teams combine for just 30 points. BG scored eight points to take an 8-1 lead with fewer than five minutes gone, but the Falcons then scored only eight more points over the final 15:18. Still, however, the Brown and Orange held a two-point lead, 16-14, at the break.
The Flashes came up with offensive rebounds on each of their first two possessions of the night, but could not score. Meanwhile, the Falcons got an offensive board and putback by Rogers on BG's first trip down the floor.
Moments later, Steffen converted a driving layup just before the shot-clock horn, and a KSU player stepped over the line while inbounding the ball, giving it right back to the Falcons. That possession saw Halfhill hit a layup, giving the Brown and Orange an early 6-0 lead.
Ashley Evans got the home team on the scoreboard, splitting a pair of free throws with 4:25 gone, but Justinger came right back with a drive and a shot off glass for that 8-1 lead.
After Trisha Krewson scored on a backdoor layup, however, neither team would score again for nearly three minutes. Finally, Evans hit a three-pointer to cut the Falcons' lead to two points, and Rachel Mendelsohn's driving layup tied the score with exactly nine minutes gone.
After combining for 16 points in those nine minutes, the Falcons and Flashes would score just 14 over the final 11 minutes of the half. Steffen missed a jumper, but went to the floor to grab the rebound in traffic in the paint. From her knees, the senior flipped a pass to the cutting Halfhill for an easy layup. That snapped BG's scoreless streak at six minutes and 12 seconds.
But, the Flashes then held the Falcons without a bucket for a two-and-a-half minute span. Krewson answered Halfhill's layup with one of her own, and Diamon Beckford scored at the 6:56 mark to give KSU the lead for the first time. Beckford led all players with 14 points on the night.
Steffen answered with a layup, but Heather Bachman scored to give the hosts a 14-12 lead at the 5:53 mark. Those would be Kent's last two points of the period.
The teams combined to go over five minutes without putting a single shot through the hoop. After Bachman's bucket, the Flashes went 0-for-5 from the field with five turnovers in the remaining minutes of the half.
Meanwhile, the Falcons suffered through a prolonged drought of their own. BGSU missed eight consecutive shots before Steffen hit a third-chance three-pointer. Offensive rebounds by Rogers and Halfhill had kept that possession alive, and Halfhill fed Steffen for the triple with 52 seconds left in the half. That shot gave BG a 15-14 lead, and the Falcons never trailed again.
After a KSU miss, Rogers got the offensive rebound and was fouled. She split her free-throw tries with 29.1 seconds on the clock, giving the Falcons a two-point edge at the half.
BGSU shot just 25.9 percent in the first period, making 7-of-27 shots. The Flashes hit only six shots in 22 attempts, for a 27.3% success rate.
The second half saw the Falcons threaten to pull away on several occasions, only to have KSU rally back. Rogers hit a layup, and a KSU miss resulted in a defensive rebound by Halfhill and a long pass ahead to Justinger for a transition layup and a 20-14 lead, prompting the hosts to use a timeout.
Beckford responded with a pair of free throws, and Mendelsohn's coast-to-coast drive and 'and-one' layup' cut the Falcons' lead to just two points. Mendelsohn missed the free throw, however, and Steffen's layup gave the Brown and Orange a 22-18 lead after the seas parted, leaving a wide-open lane.
Justinger's charity tosses were answered by a Beckford layup, and Stein's layup was followed by a pair of Krewson free throws. Then, however, the Falcons got a little breathing room.
Halfhill fed Justinger for a three-pointer, and the Falcons had a seven-point lead. Then, freshman Bailey Cairnduff knocked down a pull-up jumper, and Halfhill put a teammate's miss back up and in. Suddenly, the Falcons' run was 7-0, and the BG lead was 11 points, 33-22, with 8:05 to go.
Beckford scored inside to snap that run, but Steffen came right back with a driving right-side layup. When Halfhill fed Stein for a layup, the Falcons were ahead by 13, 37-24.
Beckford got herself to the free-throw line and converted, but Steffen's alert pass hit a wide-open Stein for a layup with 6:27 to go.
The teams traded points, with BG's lead fluctuating between 11 and 13, until senior Allison Papenfuss soared above numerous would-be rebounders for an offensive board, and her jumper gave the visitors a 46-32 lead with 2:10 to go.
BG's remaining points all came at the free-throw line, while the Flashes scored 11 points over the final 1:31 to cut the deficit into single digits. Kent State hit two three-pointers within the last 22 seconds of the contest, for a total of three triples in the game.
The Falcons shot 48.1% from the floor in the second period, finishing with a 37.0% rate for the game. KSU shot 32.1% in the second half and exactly 30.0% on the night.
BGSU had advantages of 13-2 in points off turnovers and 14-3 in second-chance points.
The winner of Saturday's BGSU-KSU game will face either Eastern Michigan or Western Michigan in the second round. Eighth-seeded EMU hosts ninth-seeded WMU in first-round action on Saturday afternoon. The second-round game will begin at 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 13, at Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland.
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