A four-point halftime lead was not enough for the Bowling Green women’s basketball team on Saturday afternoon.
Despite finishing the first half on an 18-10 run and having the momentum swing in their favor, the Falcons [9-11, 2-7] had no answer to start the second half as Toledo couldn’t buy a miss en route to a 64-48 loss at home.
Following a Rachel Konieczki floater in the lane to get the half underway, the Rockets explosively answered with a layup and then back-to-back-to-back three pointers to take a 32-27 lead, 3:27 into the second half.
“[Toledo] came out intense, hit some huge shots and just kind of got rolling and we couldn’t seem to get the ball rolling ourselves to stop the run,” said Deborah Hoekstra on the Rockets’ surge to begin the second half.
This was the start of an 11-point half from leading-scorer, Brenae Harris, who finished with 17 points on 5-of-9 shooting and ignited a 33-8 run for Toledo, stretching its lead to 19. The lead reached as high as 21 just over a minute later.
The Falcons were outscored 43-23 in the second half, shooting a lackluster 29.4 percent [5-of-17] from the field including just 1-of-9 from behind the arc. Toledo, very much a polar opposite, shot 14-of-23 [60.9 percent] including 5-of-8 [62.5 percent] from deep.
Much of the shooting success for Toledo was the smaller lineup it chose to go with after halftime which bothered the Falcons down the stretch in a multitude of ways.
“Their smaller lineup meant that they were able to keep up with us,” Hoekstra said. “We created a lot of mismatches with the offenses that we were running in the first half, really attacking their bigs, using our smaller speed and that was something that got taken away in the second half.”
Despite the smaller lineup, the Rockets still held a significant height advantage over the Falcons and it was exposed.
In the second half, Toledo outscored the Falcons 14-8 in the paint, out-rebounded the Falcons 16-11 [36-27 for the game] and finished with more second chance points.
“More importantly than anything else that really swayed the score was their ability to get the ball inside against us when we had our five-guard lineup,” said head coach Jennifer Roos. “They kept it very simple and were able to get a lot of shots inside. They were on fire and they obviously responded.”
This explosion by Toledo was paired with what Deborah Hoekstra referred to as a, “lax offense” and settling for jumpers as opposed to attacking the inside as they did in the first half.
The first half was a struggle in the beginning as well before a spinning Erica Fullenkamp jumper fell and appeared to energize the Falcons. This was the start of the 18-10 run to end the half in which the Falcons were able to diversify their offense, hitting 3’s and getting to the line.
This included 13 combined points from Hoekstra and Miriam Justinger.
“I thought we were able to execute our cutting offense [in the first half]. We were able to get some good looks for Miriam and Deborah and I thought we controlled tempo,” Roos said.
The Falcons inability to maintain a consistent lead proved to be too much for them to overcome in the final 20 minutes.
Now back-to-back losses, Bowling Green will have the chance to right the ship and keep its deteriorating Mid-American Conference championship chances alive in a midweek game against Central Michigan at home.
