BGSU women’s soccer (3-1-0) will head back to Cochrane Stadium for a Sunday afternoon matchup with Cincinnati (2-2-1) on Aug. 31 at 1 p.m. after a short game-long hiatus that featured a 4-1 road victory over Detroit Mercy on Thursday evening.
Falcon Media Sports Network’s Lucas Kleimeyer and Kevin Hutchinson will have the call on WBGU-PBS YouTube Channel.
The battle with the Bearcats features the second Power Four opponent to come to Cochrane Stadium to play the Falcons in 2025 after Illinois beat BG 1-0 on Sunday, Aug. 17. Cincinnati enters its third season as a member of the Big 12, where it finished ninth in the conference standings in 2023 and 12th in 2024.
The Falcons and the Bearcats have a recent history that features home and road matchups between the programs in 2022 and 2023, which ended in a 1-0 loss in Cincinnati in 2023 and a 1-1 tie at Cochrane Stadium in 2022. After Sunday’s matchup, the Falcons will play host to one more non-conference opponent in 2025, the Duquesne Dukes, before beginning conference play on Sept. 14.
Scouting Bowling Green
After Detroit Mercy went up 1-0 going into halftime on Thursday, the Falcons stormed back to score four unanswered goals, the most by the squad against any opponent since Oct. 19, 2023, when they beat Central Michigan 5-1 at home.
After a corner kick gave junior Isabella Mazzaferro her first goal as a Falcon, forwards Ellie Pool and Emma Stransky sent long-distance, highlight strikes into the net to give BG their second and third goals.
Pool scored a fourth in the 89th minute to give herself a second goal of the season and her first multi-goal match as a Falcon and the second of her career, with her first also coming against Detroit Mercy in 2021 as a member of the Toledo Rockets.
After outshooting the Titans 4-2 in the first half, they went berserk in the second, taking 12 shots while allowing only one and capitalizing on set-piece opportunities, scoring a goal off of six second-half corner kicks and nine total in the match. The Falcons have the second-most corner kicks of any MAC team as well as the second-most goals, with seven in four matches.
With the victory, the Falcons now sit at the top of the early-season MAC standings as the only team with three victories on the year.
Scouting Cincinnati
The Bearcats have had an up-and-down start to the 2025 season, earning both their victories against MAC opponents while losing back-to-back games to Notre Dame and Xavier, getting outscored 7-0 in the process.
The squad has three games under its belt against the MAC, beating Eastern Michigan 4-0 to open the season before hosting Toledo the following match, where they achieved only a 1-1 tie over the Rockets.
Most recently, the Bearcats played host to Central Michigan and handed them their fourth straight loss to open the season by a 2-0 final score.
Senior defenders Faith Broering and Maddie Swingle lead the Bearcats in scoring with nine combined points and four of the team’s seven goals. The squad is led by experience, with five players at the senior level or above in the starting lineup alone.
Head coach Erica Demers enters her third season as head coach of the Bearcats after finishing 12th out of 16 Big 12 squads in 2024. Before Cincinnati, Demers was the head coach of the UAB Blazers, where she reached the C-USA Tournament four out of five seasons and finished with a 41-34-14 overall record in five seasons with the program.
