It’s a good time to be a basketball fan in Bowling Green.
The men are playing well and the women are playing even better.
And there may be no better time for each team to prove themselves than this week.
The men’s basketball team has a rather large task coming up this week in battles with directional Michigan teams Eastern and Western.
The Falcons have yet to take a big-time road win and Ypsilanti would be a great place to start. The Eagles are 6-0 this season and are deeper than Lake Superior (the deepest lake in the U.S — it’s the best I could do). The Falcons will get a chance to display their skills Wednesday and continue their momentum into the grand daddy of them all (for the week) this weekend when they welcome Western Michigan to town.
The Broncos are 10-1 on the season and feature the league’s best player in Ben Reed. On top of this they are the defending MAC champions and the road the Falcons will have to travel to win the MAC this season will most likely go through Kalamazoo.
And most importantly, this will be the make-or-break week for me.
All season long, I’ve had to hear my friends tell me how bad the Falcons would be this season after suffering some losses in the offseason. If BG can pull of two wins this week, my (former) friends can have a large slice of I told you so pie.
The only way basketball could get more exciting in BG is if the women were playing defending MAC champion Eastern Michigan and following it up with a game in Toledo this weekend.
That just so happens to be the case.
Eastern is arguably the Falcons’ number one enemy this season.
On top of being the defending MAC champions, they took down BG in the MAC title game to win that championship.
Mix in the fact that they knocked out BG from the MAC tourney two seasons ago and you have a team that has been a rather large pain in the neck, back and kidney for the Falcons.
Eastern would make a great rival if it weren’t for those rascals from the city that brings the IQ of Ohio down dramatically, Toledo (please make them part of Michigan).
As usual, the Rockets are and will always be the Falcons’ biggest rivals. After all, driving down I-75 are the only directions they can remember well enough to play enough games to establish a solid rivalry with anyone.
Add in the ever present “BG girls are ugly” shirts and chants of BGSU … CKS and this becomes the strongest rivalry in the conference and the girls will be right in the middle of it when they travel to Savage Hall this weekend.
The Rockets have had troubles this season but as usual are solid.
BG head coach Curt Miller said they were the sleeper team in the conference and have plenty of talent to take this year’s MAC title.
To say the least, if any game has a chance to be bigger than the game against Eastern, it is the game against the Rockets.
And to say the least one more time, this should be the biggest week for BG basketball this season.