A sluggish first half doomed BGSU women’s basketball in a 75-63 loss to Ball State in the Mid-American Conference (MAC) Tournament quarterfinals Wednesday at Rocket Arena in Cleveland.
Bowling Green struggled to find any rhythm in the first 20 minutes, trailing 42-28 at halftime before falling behind by as many as 17 points.
The Falcons shot just 13-for-40 from the field and 0-7 on 3-pointers in the first half.
“We just prepare really well. We’ve spent these last two days really scouting, and I did feel prepared going into this. We knew who their shooters are, we knew their personnel, I think that was a really big thing,” Ball State senior Bree Salenbien said. “Running their 3-point shooters off the line, that was really big time.”
Additionally, Bowling Green attempted just two free throws in the first half, the opposite of its game plan.
“We had planned on getting downhill and forcing the officials to make some foul calls and not bail out on shots, get the ball up anyway we could with force. The game was just called differently, and we had to adjust,” BGSU head coach Fred Chmiel said. “I thought that we would have drawn more fouls than Ball State today, just because of the way that we play, the style that we play and the aggression that we play with. It just didn’t play out like that.”
Ball State’s defense caused trouble for BG all game, especially for the team’s star guards.
Sophomore Johnea Donahue had her worst shooting game of the season, scoring just seven points on 2-for-16 shooting from the field.
Meanwhile, junior Paige Kohler, who scored a team-high 16 points, shot just 7-for-18 from the floor and was held without a 3-pointer for the third time this season and first since Dec. 3 against Kentucky State, going 0-for-3 from beyond the arc.
At one point, Donahue and Kohler combined to shoot just 3-of-20.
“I think we learned a lot from the first game (against Bowling Green). Especially when you got a new team like we do, we came out and you see them on film that first time at our place, but you don’t understand how explosive [Donahue] is until you see it, right? You don’t understand the spins and how she stays under control until you see it, right? Kohler, we learned in that first game, you give her an inch and the shot’s off, right,” Ball State head coach Brady Sallee said.
The Cardinals were extremely prepared for the matchup against the Falcons since their first meeting on Feb. 14, when Ball State won 82-67.
“It was a weird thing but I had a feeling we would see them again. So, when we got done playing them at our place, our film session was really a little bit deeper than normal. I told them, I said, ‘Guys, we’re going to see this group again.’ I just had a feeling that we were going to see them somewhere up [in Cleveland], so we got a little bit more in-depth then,” Sallee said. “So, when we came back to it, I think our knowledge of those guys was really good.”
Ultimately, Bowling Green fought back in the second half, cutting the deficit to four points. But the first half dug too big of a hole to climb out of.
