The BGSU women’s basketball team saw their 2020-21 season come to an end on Monday with a 78-68 loss against Drake in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament (WNIT).
The Falcons finished their season with a 21-8 record which is an 11-game improvement as they only won ten games last season.
“We talked as a staff talked a lot about kind of slowing down and enjoying coaching a group of enthusiastic, self-motivated, team-first kids. There’s a real magic, when you as a coach get to coach a team like that it’s a real sweet spot and as a staff, we knew it while it was happening,” BGSU head coach Robyn Fralick said.
Senior Madisen Parker led the way for the way for the Falcons scoring a team high 14 points. Three other Falcons also finished in double figures as well. Sophomore Elissa Brett added 12 points, Freshman Nyla Hampton had 11 points and Redshirt Senior Clare Glowniak had 10 points.
The game marks the possible end of careers of four seniors: Parker, Glowniak, Angela Perry and Mari Hill. Fralick expects the team to see some of these seniors return as they are eligible to do so with the NCAA giving all players and extra year of eligibility due to the way that the pandemic affected the season.
“Our seniors are the coolest. I mean to find kids that will play whatever role the team needs. Mature, be great teammates, embrace the younger kids, teach them about the program, teach them about the way we do things. That’s really lucky. I told those kids today that they transformed our program, they left the Bowling Green jersey better than they found it,” she said.
In the first quarter, both teams started out trading baskets until the Bulldogs went on a 9-0 run to make it an 18-9 lead. The Falcons answered with a 8-0 run of their own but after the end of the first the Falcons saw themselves down 23-19.
In the second, BG took a 26-24 lead thanks to Parker scoring five straight and then a euro-step layup by Freshman Kenzie Lewis. Drake didn’t let the Falcon’s lead last long as then went on a quick 5-0 run and a 6-0 run to find themselves with a 40-33 lead at the half.
In the second half, Drake extended their lead to 14 with four minutes to go in the game, but the Falcons just could not cut into the Bulldogs lead as they outscored BG in the second half 38-35 and pulled out the victory.
Coming off a 10-win season and BG was picked to finish in the bottom two in the MAC, it is safe to say this team exceeded all expectations. But Fralick is proudest of the fact that the team was able to play a season as close to normal as possible during a pandemic.
“Playing through a pandemic has its own layers of challenges. Exhaustion because of the expectations we have on them. I credit our kids, our team, our support staff that we played our whole season, we didn’t have a single pause and that’s amazing. I’m so proud of the sacrifices that our kids made,” Fralick said.
