Sometimes, it isn’t how you win the game; it’s just the fact that you won it in the end.
That is how the Bowling Green (16-6, 9-2) women’s basketball team is looking at it after dismantling cellar dwelling Akron (3-20, 2-9) at Rhodes Arena Saturday.
The Falcons won the game 61-52, but it wasn’t their most impressive win of the season, not by a long shot.
“We’ll take an ugly road win,” BG head coach Curt Miller said. “The seedings won’t remember if it was ugly or pretty at the end of the year.”
The Falcons struggled from the start as leading scorer Liz Honegger made her way to the bench early in foul trouble. Honegger’s presence in the post was missed in the first half as she played just seven minutes while being held scoreless in the game’s first 20 minutes.
That’s where center Kelly Kapferer came in. The fifth year senior scored nine points in the first half to go with three boards and a pair of blocks.
“We struggled to get the ball inside early,” Miller said. “Kelly Kapferer kept us on the positive in the first half. Without the effort of Kelly Kapferer I don’t know where we would’ve been.”
Kapferer kept the Falcons on the positive, but just barely as a pesky Akron team found themselves trailing by a score of just 29-27 heading into the locker room.
The start was something Miller had stressed to his team to avoid this past week in practice.
“We warned the kids all week how dangerous this team is,” Miller said, “and not to overlook a very talented and hard nosed Akron team whose record doesn’t reflect how good they are.”
But BG, led by 15 second half points from forward Ali Mann, was able to slowly pull away from the Zips and collect the win.
The Falcons will keep the best record in the MAC with the win but they lost another record at the same time.
BG shot 0-13 from the three-point line and failed to hit a three-pointer for the first time in 193 games.
“They defend the arch really well and nothing has changed with that,” Miller said.
Even with the strong defense around the perimeter, it was a surprise for BG not to hit at least one three.
“We told the kids they were defending but we were getting open looks and you’ve got to make the open looks,” Miller said. “If you go back and watch the film you’ll see some of the looks Carin [Horne] and Liz had. With how well they shoot in games and practice you’d be hard pressed not to believe one of those would go down. But we were able to survive that.”
