Despite hot shooting in the second half, BGSU basketball was ultimately let down by their defense in the and fell to Buffalo 88-84 on senior night at the Stroh Center.
The loss marks a three-game losing streak to end the season and ensures that the Falcons will not get the No. 1 seed in the MAC tournament next weekend, they will instead be the No. 2 seed.
For head coach Michael Huger, he sees the upcoming tournament as a way for the Falcons to wipe the slate clean. The Falcons also lost four-of-five games going into the MAC tournament last season as well, but still managed to make it to the Championship game.
“It’s a different energy, everything is renewed, everything is started over, every team has the same chance. So whether you’re in twelfth or first, it’s out the window now. Now it’s just one game and whoever you play if you have a great matchup that you like and it’s a good matchup for the team, you got a chance to win,” Huger said.
Justin Turner led the Falcons with 23 points, his 14th 20-point game of the season. It was him along with Dylan Frye, who also had 20 in the game, that kept the Falcons alive throughout the entirety of the game.
The defense however, is eventually what made the hot shooting a moot point as Bowling Green let Buffalo shoot the ball 54% from the field and 31% from the three-point line. Jayvon Graves for the Bulls led all scorers with 25 points going 11-of-19 from the field.
The Bulls were very successful from the paint as well, scoring 56 of their 84 points from there. Turner knew that was going to be a focus for this Buffalo team.
“I felt like they spaced us out real well, we knew coming in that they were a driving team, they were getting to the paint a lot,” Turner said.
Turnovers were a big part of the problem for the Falcons as well, as they gave the ball away 17 times in this game, six higher than their average for the season. But despite all of that the Falcons still were within striking distance almost until the final buzzer.
“I don’t know, I don’t know. We turned the ball over at the wrong times and they were able to capitalize. It wasn’t necessarily what they did defensively, they didn’t do anything different or special on the defensive end, we just had careless turnovers that cost us on the other end. At the end though it’s still a four-point game with a chance if a free throw is missed here or there we’ve got a chance,” Huger said.
Bowling Green falls to 21-10 overall on the season and 12-6 in the MAC. They will now look ahead to the MAC Tournament where they will play the winner of the No. 7-No.10 matchup at 6:30 p.m. on Friday at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland.
