Bowling Green can breath a sigh of relief, at least for a moment.
The Falcon’s 73-58 victory over Buffalo last night combined with Toledo’s 69-68 win at Ohio delivered BG a first-round bye and the No. 3 seed in the Mid-American Conference Tournament .
This means BG’s Saturday match up with Ohio won’t be the determining factor for the first-round bye. Ball State’s loss to Northern Illinois also earned the Falcons the second best record in the MAC during the regular season.
“The sigh of relief saves me one day of being miserable which would have been Monday waiting around for a (first-round) game,” BG coach Dan Dakich said. “There are debates about what you want to do. Do you want the bye or not? We got the bye, so I guess we want the bye.”
The Falcons (22-6, 12-5 in the MAC) took the lead early against the Bulls and never looked back as the BG senior class scored 63 of its team’s points in the final game at Anderson Arena. Center Len Matela led all scorers with 21 points. Guards Keith McLeod and Brandon Pardon added 19 and 17 points respectively. Forward Brent Klassen added six.
“It was great,” Dakich said. “I don’t know how much they will enjoy it because they weren’t playing very well in the second half, but when they look back on it, they won’t remember how the game went. They’ll remember that they won by 15.”
After Buffalo scored the first bucket of the game, McLeod, Matela and Klassen scored consecutive field goals to give the Falcons an early 6-2 advantage. Pardon got in on the scoring with 10 minutes left in the first half to spread the lead out to 22-12. After the Bulls cut the lead to 25-17, the Falcons went on a 14-2 run to build a 39-22 lead by halftime. McLeod only played nine minutes in the first half after getting into early foul trouble.
“I thought we played pretty, well holding them to 22 points and being up 17 without Keith playing a lot of minutes,” Dakich said. “I didn’t really feel like the game was going to get away from us, but it was a strange deal.”
The strange deal Dakich was describing was BG’s opportunities to put the game away for good in the second half but leaving the Bulls close enough for the fifth-year coach to remain cautious.
“Second half I thought it was one of those deals where I think we played to score,” Dakich said. “We were up 22 when I looked out on the court, and everybody was out of their stance after being in one the entire game.”
BG’s contest with Ohio will start after the Falcon women’s team’s MAC first-round Tournament game with the Bobcats. The men’s team will head to Cleveland and play its first-round game Thursday at Gund Arena.
