BGSU women’s basketball continued their good play on Friday night with a 71-64 win over Eastern Michigan in their first game of the MAC season.

With the victory the Falcons move to 4-0 on the season and 1-0 in the MAC. This is the first time that the Falcons have sported a 4-0 record since 2017 when they finished 11-19. 

“As a senior I don’t think that we have started 1-0 in the MAC yet and I don’t think that we have beat Eastern Michigan yet either. I think they beat us by 20 last year so to come out and win by seven is such an awesome feeling,” senior forward Angela Perry said.

It would be freshman Lexi Flemming that would once again lead the Falcons to victory with 21 points on 8 of 12 shooting from the field and 3 of 5 shooting from beyond the arc. 

Flemming has started off her college career as the leading scorer for the Falcons in 3 of 4 games. She has scored in double digits in every game and tonight marks the second time this season she has scored over 20 points. The first coming in the season opener against Valparaiso. 

Foul trouble dominated this game early on as both teams combined for 20 fouls in the first half and 12 in the first quarter. As a result this led to some foul trouble as both teams had a player foul out. Kenzie Lewis for the Falcons and Juanita Agosto for the Eagles. 

“It was an interesting basketball game. I think there was a lot of foul trouble for us early in the game. We had a lot of different lineups in there in the first half,” BGSU Head Coach Robyn Fralick said. “I was really proud of the way our team responded. We had some different lineups, some different people and I thought that we gutted it out and primarily with our defense.”

Defense as well as the slow pace of the game resulted in a low scoring first half, as the Falcons went into the locker room with a 33-29 lead. 

Neither team shot the ball over 20% from beyond the arc in the first half and both teams shot just over 30% from the field.

It was Angela Perry and freshman Lexi Flemming that led the scoring for the Falcons with nine. Fleming on 4 of 6 shooting and Perry on 4 of 8 shooting. 

Perry comes back in this one after being out in the last game with an injury and did not show any signs of being affected as she finished with 19 points on the night. 

The second half was the Perry and Flemming show. They would combine for 22 of the 38 points scored by the Falcons in the final two periods.

The Eagles would still outscore the Falcons in third quarter though, cutting the Falcon’s lead to just two headed into the final quarter. 

This is when the Falcons started to pull away however, as ahey would shoot 80% from three and just over 55% from the field compared to 25% from the field and 20% from three for the Eagles. 

Madisen Parker would hit two threes while Kadie Hempfling and Flemming would also add one of their own to help stretch the lead all the way to eight with under two minutes to go. 

“I think my team shoots just as much as anyone in the MAC if not more. I have full confidence in all of our shooters and it was just a matter of finding their rhythm and knocking down those shots because all of our guards can do that,” Perry said.

A couple of turnovers and a slew of offensive rebounds would keep things a little scary for the Falcons late, but in the end the Falcons would pull out another close win, continuing to change the narrative of a team from prior years that couldn’t seem to finish out close games. 

“We still made a lot of mistakes but what was different was one, we had a nine point lead, we really had put ourselves in a good position through the fourth quarter. The second thing was we went 5 of 6 from the free throw in the fourth quarter which was a huge step for us,” Fralick said.

The Falcons will now travel to Purdue on Sunday for a quick turnaround game against the Boilermakers who are 2-1 on the season