The Bowling Green women’s basketball team has a chance to clinch their first regular season Mid-American Conference title since 1994 with a win against Northern Illinois.

The Falcons already rolled past the Huskies 80-44 in a Feb. 2 game at Anderson Arena. Even so, the Falcons know it’s going to be a fight.

“[Last game] came easy against Northern and that’s a shock,” BG head coach Curt Miller said. “We got ahead early, got them down and didn’t get their best effort.”

The Falcons took a ten-point lead into the locker room at the half and rolled from there, using 23 turnovers and a 27.8 percent shooting day from Northern to earn the easy win.

It didn’t hurt that the Falcons shot 48.2 percent in that game and hit 11 three-pointers.

BG knows they probably won’t have quite the same fortune this time around.

If the Falcons lose, they will fall into a first place tie in the MAC with Kent State, Marshall and Eastern Michigan and miss out on winning the MAC title outright. So this game goes well beyond just going into DeKalb and beating Northern.

“We’re still playing for a number one seed and a MAC championship,” Miller said. “I can’t imagine we’ll have a letdown.”

The Falcons will also have to find a way to replace the play of forward Ali Mann, who injured her ankle in Saturday’s game against Toledo.

Mann is averaging 13.8 points and 7.7 rebounds per game, but her importance goes past the X’s and O’s of basketball.

“She’s a leader on the floor,” Miller said. “We need someone who can be vocal and coach on the floor.”

It’s been awhile

Minus the loss of Mann, this season has been quite positive for the Falcons.

They started the season playing No. 6 Ohio State. They’ve managed to build their best record in the conference in years. And they’re on the cusp of restoring glory to the Bowling Green program.

Just two years ago, these events seemed unimaginable to those around the program. Miller, in his fourth year at BG, was only able to rack up 21 wins in his first two seasons as head coach. Last year, the Falcons equaled that record en route to a run to the MAC title game and are on pace to equal that total again.

For Miller and the Falcons, all this good fortune wasn’t supposed to happen until next season — the fifth season in Miller’s five-year plan to turn the program around.

“I wasn’t unrealistic in thinking it may take six or seven years,” he said. “But a great freshman and sophomore class has accelerated that plan.”

For Miller, the rapid rate of his team’s success has come as a surprise.

But looking around every day makes the success seem more realistic.

“It’s not all that surprising when I’m in practice and I see the people that I’m working around,” Miller said.

BG will take the first step towards glory restoration at 8 p.m. in DeKalb when they take on NIU. A win will give BG an outright MAC title.