Buffalo women’s basketball (25-6, 13-5) completed a 13-point comeback to stun BGSU (18-13, 11-7) and knock them out of the MAC Tournament for the second straight season, defeating the Falcons 65-63 in the quarterfinals on Wednesday night at Rocket Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
Buffalo continues to be the boogeyman for Bowling Green, defeating them for the second time this season, the fifth time in a row and the 22nd time in the past 26 meetings. BGSU head coach Fred Chmiel has yet to beat the Bulls in his two years at BG.
“It’s not a good feeling, it’s not a good feeling. I’m not going to shy away from it; it’s not a very good memory,” Chmiel said postgame. “So, I think we have some work to do.”
Buffalo graduate guard Chellia Watson dominated, scoring a game-high 27 points and making the game-winning layup with 10.5 seconds remaining.
“You let a big player make big plays, and you give them some freedom, and you give them some grace,” Buffalo head coach Becky Burke said postgame. “I’ve been with the kid for five years, and I’d put the ball in her hands over anybody that’s here in Cleveland on any team because I think she’s that special.”
Watson shot 11-22 from the field and 4-6 on 3-pointers in her 21st 20-point game of the season.
“She’s a great player. She is fast in transition, three-level scorer, so you don’t know if she’s going to pull from three, a pull-up or take it all the way,” BGSU fifth-year guard Lexi Fleming said postgame. “She definitely challenged me.”
UB Sophomore guard Kirsten Lewis-Williams recorded her third double-double of the season, tallying 15 points and a game-high 11 rebounds.
BGSU fifth-year forward Erika Porter led the Falcons in scoring with 19 points on 8-12 shooting from the field, adding six rebounds and a block.
Meanwhile, Fleming tallied 16 points and hit a team-best four 3-pointers.
Buffalo shot 49.1% (26-53) from the field and 57.1% (4-7) on 3-pointers, while BG shot just 38.7% (24-62) from the floor and 31.6% (6-19) from deep.
However, the Falcons led in nearly every other category, besting the Bulls in rebounds (35 to 32), offensive rebounds (13 to six), assists (16 to nine), points in the paint (32 to 28) and points off turnovers (14 to 10).
BGSU also committed just 11 personal fouls and 14 turnovers compared to Buffalo’s 18 fouls and 16 giveaways.
The first quarter was a low-scoring and sloppy affair, with the teams combining to turn over the ball nine teams, including a stretch midway through the period where the teams committed a turnover on three straight possessions.
Both teams started sluggish, with the Bulls shooting just 1-5 from the field and Bowling Green missing their first seven shots, taking over four minutes to score their first point. Only one 3-pointer was made in the first 10 minutes.
The Falcons opened the second quarter energized, outscoring Buffalo 7-0 over the first three-and-a-half minutes of the period, with Fleming capping off the run with a jumper and 3-pointer.
The Bulls struggled to get out of first gear in the first half, turning the ball over 12 times, including seven giveaways in the second quarter alone. Buffalo shot just one 3-pointer in the first 20 minutes, while the Falcons only committed one foul.
After back-and-forth action during the backend of the second quarter, BGSU headed to the locker room with a 26-22 lead.
Bowling Green controlled the third quarter, outscoring Buffalo 23-15.
Buffalo caught fire to begin the second half, going on a 9-0 run to begin the third quarter, with Watson scoring five points to give UB a 29-28 lead.
However, Fleming responded with her third 3-pointer of the game to put Bowling Green back in front.
Shortly after, sophomore guard Paige Kohler drained back-to-back 3-pointers, extending BG’s lead to 39-32.
Toward the end of the third quarter, a three-point play by Porter and another Fleming triple pushed the Orange and Brown’s lead to a game-high 13 points, 49-36.
After three complete quarters, Bowling Green cracked in the final 10 minutes, as Buffalo erased a 12-point deficit at the start of the fourth quarter by outscoring the Falcons 28-14 in the final period.
“I can’t say enough about the resilience and toughness of our team and our ability to come back time after time after time again,” Burke said. “We pride ourselves on being blue collar, mentally tough, physically tough, and that’s about the toughest 10 minutes of basketball I think we played all season, and it was right on time.”
Buffalo’s defense, especially in the paint, tightened up as the game went on, as the Bulls tallied a season-high nine blocked shots.
“We’re not the biggest team in the paint. I do feel like we’re one of the more athletic teams in this league, if not the most athletic. So, just giving them the ability and the freedom to go block some shots and have some fun with some stuff and fly around obviously worked to our favor today,” Burke said. “Those nine [blocks] were really, really big.”
Watson took over at the end of the game, scoring 13 points in the final quarter.
“The fourth quarter; it’s Chellia Watson time,” Burke said.
Watson set the tone early in the quarter, hitting back-to-back 3-pointers to cut BG’s lead to five points, 56-51.
“I thought it was pretty clear that Watson got loose on us. Hit those couple of threes,” Chmiel said. “A player like Watson, I know [Fleming] was guarding her, but it takes five [players]. As a team, our awareness had to be higher with her, especially at that point in the game.”
Shortly after, Watson converted a three-point play, cutting Buffalo’s deficit to just three points, 57-54
“We let them go on that run. We have to be able to stop that bleeding,” Kohler said postgame. “They punched the paint a little bit too much, and we collapsed.”
A free throw by sophomore guard Lewis-Williams tied the game at 57 apiece with three-and-a-half minutes remaining before Buffalo regained the lead on a transition layup by Lewis-Williams with 1:21 remaining.
Two free throws by senior guard Amy Velasco with 49.2 seconds remaining tied the game at 63 apiece before fifth-year guard Noelani Cornfield, who finished with 14 points and surpassed 1,000 career collegiate points in the win, came up with a huge steal late, stripping the ball from freshman guard Johnea Donahue, who finished with six rebounds and four steals, with 19 seconds remaining before Buffalo called a timeout.
“[Cornfield]’s one of the most special athletes I’ve ever coached. I mean, her ability to cover ground and fly around the way that she does, I mean, there’s a reason she was [MAC] All-Defensive Team, and I think she’s so, so, so special, both offensively and defensively,” Burke. “You don’t see many players like her that are impacting the game in the way that she does; the deflections, the covering up for others, the on-ball defense. She does the stuff that’s not so glamorous, but she’s been a crucial piece to our team. I think she’s changed the entire way that we play, both offensively and defensively, this year.”
After Watson’s layup with 10.5 seconds remaining, a steal by Lewis-Williams on an inbound pass to Porter with 3.6 seconds left sealed the victory for the Bulls.
“We can’t let that run get that deep because we didn’t end up making our run,” Fleming said.
The loss marked the possible last collegiate games for Fleming, Porter and Velasco, who are all seniors or fifth-year players.
“We’re really going to miss our senior crew. They’ve meant a lot to this team, university and the community as a whole. It’s hard in what might be their last game to watch them walk out the door because they’re such a big, integral piece of who we are,” Chmiel said. “We want to make sure we thank them and honor them for all the hard work and sacrifice, and, I’ll tell you this, they gave us 1,000% of everything they had. There’s not one person in that locker room that took shortcuts or didn’t give everything they had to their team…I know they’ll be fantastic out in the world because of who they are.”
Next, Buffalo will play Toledo on Friday at 12:30 p.m. in the semifinals of the MAC Tournament. Meanwhile, BGSU will have to wait and see if they get a bid to the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT), the Women’s National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) or the Women’s Basketball Invitational (WBI).
“[The program]’s heading in a great direction. The way that we were playing towards the end of the season, I wish that kind of came earlier for us to show more people what we were about,” Fleming said. “There’s a hump that you have to get over, and I believe that we’re on the way to getting over that hump.”
