The men’s basketball team visited the defending Mid-American Conference champions last night, as they squared off with the Kent State Golden Flashes.
BG entered the game flying high after their upset victory in the conference opener against the Buffalo Bulls. Beating Kent State on their home floor however, is something that has been done only once in the Golden Flashes last 21 home games.
The Falcons battled the Golden Flashes to a 33-33 tie at the half. Chris Knight continued to come up big for the team as he recorded nine first half points.
The Falconsdidn’t fair well out of the intermission however, and allowed Kent State to go on a 27-6 run to start the half.
“Second half, I don’t know. We knew they go on runs, and we couldn’t climb back,” Knight said.
By the time the run finally ended with a Knight free throw, the Falcons had fallen behind by 21 points, and a promising first half had been all but erased by a less than stellar second half.
Al Fisher led the way for Kent State and finished with 23 points.
The big story of the game though was the way Bowling Green let things go in the second half. Losing by a final of 72-48, the shot under 23.1 percent from the field, and couldn’t have looked less fluid on offense.
“They really had a tough night shooting the ball. We played really good defense but there were also a lot of possessions where they (BG) had good looks but just didn’t knock them down,” one Kent State coach said.
BG was outscored 39-15 in the second half and seem to have no way of getting the ball in the basket. After falling behind by 20, the Falcons actually seemed to resort to taking the first semi-open three point shot they could find.
“For this particular game, that was not the game plan. We shot quick three’s on a lot of our possessions. That really caught up with us in the second half,” Orr said, adding “If you’re going to shoot 23 threes, you have to make more than two.”
One bright spot for the Falcons was Otis Polk, who finished two points shy of a double-double after bringing in 10 rebounds.
“We were fortunate he got in foul trouble and wasn’t in the game much in the second half,” one Kent State coach said.
The Falcons now sit at 1-1 in the MAC. They’ll have two days sit regroup and prepare themselves for another big showdown at home against the Akron Zips on ESPNU.
“We need to go back to the drawing boards. We now know what we need to do and how we need to prepare,” Knight said.
At the end of this night however, it was simply a disappointing loss after an uplifting one to start the conference season. Kent State proved even though they currently sit at .500, they might still be the class of the MAC.
For news, notes and opinions on all BG sports, check out www.bgnewssports.com.
Contact assistant sports editor Jason Jones at [email protected].
