AKRON, OH. – For the first four minutes of their Mid-American Conference opener against Bowling Green, the Akron Zips shooting was as cold as the frigid temperatures and falling snow that has plagued Northeast Ohio for the past week.
Once they made their first basket, however, the Zips started a momentum that BGSU could not overcome as the hosts went on to an emphatic 71-45 win Saturday night before 3,028 fans at Rhodes Arena.
Akron (11-4, 1-0 MAC) has won 11 of its last 13 games since starting the season at 0-2. The Zips also won for the 10th time in the last 11 meetings with Bowling Green (7-6,0-1 MAC), who saw their modest two-game winning streak come to a screeching halt.
“I anticipated a hard fought game, and that’s what it was,” Zips coach Keith Dambrot said after the game. “We did the same things in both halves. We just we made a few in the second half and didn’t make any in the first half.”
As has been typical, the Zips used a balanced scoring attack. Four players tallied double figures, led by senior forward Jimmy Conyers, who scored 16 points while going 6-of-10 from the field and a perfect 3-for-3 from three point range. Steve McNees added eleven, while Chris McKnight and Anthony ‘Humpty’ Hitchens both came off the bench to add 10 points.
“When you play on the road, you have to be ready to grind for 40 minutes,” Falcons head coach Louis Orr said afterwards. “It’s a long season, but we didn’t play well tonight.”
Junior Guard Joe Jakubowski led the Falcons with 17 points, but one of the keys to the game was senior center Otis Polk, Bowling Green’s leading scorer coming into the game (11.08 ppg.), he was held to eight points but led BG in rebounds with seven.
“Polk is the most improved player in the league” Dambrot said. “He is a load. We tried to attack so he could not get the ball down low, putting pressure on their guards”
The Falcons then used a 13-0 run to open their largest lead of the game 19-10 at the 8:46 mark on a layup by Jakubowski.
From then on, Akron started to take control of the game. After missing those first nine shots, Akron started to get the feel against Bowling Green’s zone defense as they finished the first half shooting 10-for-22 while the Falcons went 7-for-21.
“I thought we got some good shots against the zone in the first half especially the first part of the game and we made nothing, but that zone (defense) is hard and if you don’t make shots from the outside it becomes more difficult” Dambrot said. “That’s one of the best zone’s in the country.”
Akron chipped away at the Falcons advantage by using a 22-7 spurt to take its largest lead of the half 32-26 on a three-pointer by Conyers from the right corner.
Reserve guard Jordan Crawford grabbed a missed Akron shot and dribbled down the floor to make a layup just before the buzzer sounded. That gave give Bowling Green some momentum going into halftime and the visitors trailed by just four points, 32-28.
The second half was all Akron as the Zips used a 13-7 spurt to open a 45-35 lead on a three by McNees from the right corner with 13:10 remaining.
Akron’s lead would not fall below double-digits the remainder of the way as the Zips started to make almost every shot from the field. Bowling Green, meanwhile, was having trouble finding the basket - missing layups and turning the ball over. “We were right there at half but our defense let up…and we missed a ton of easy shots around the basket,” Orr said.
Akron shots continued the fall as Bowling Green had no answer in the second half. The Zips biggest margin of the game was 28 points (71-43) with 61 seconds remaining before reserve Matt Karaffa scored the final basket of the game to make the final score 71-45.
Akron shot 60.9% from the field (14-for-23), including six-of-seven from three point range, in the second half. In fact, the Zips were a perfect six-for-six from beyond the arc until reserve Tim Carroll missed in the final seconds.
While the Zips turned red hot, the Falcons turned ice cold as they shot just 5-for-25 from the floor (20%) and finished the contest at 27.7% (13-for-47).
Bowling Green also hurt itself by turning the ball over 21 times as Akron coverted the miscues into 28 points.
“We really hurt ourselves more than anything tonight. We have to play better,” Orr said.
If there was a silver lining for the Falcons, it was that they went 14-for-17 from the free-throw line. In t he NCAA stats published earlier this week, Bowling Green was ranked 329th of the 334 schools in all of Division I from the charity stripe.
“Coach Orr has a class program and they will win their share of ballgames, and they are tough and hard to play against” Dambrot said.
Akron now goes into a stretch where the Zips will play four of their next five away from home. That stretch starts Wednesday in Athens against an Ohio University team who lost to Kent State in their opener 64-62.
Bowling Green returns home to face Buffalo, which opened MAC play with a 73-55 home win over Miami.
NOTES:
- The game was the 45th lifetime meeting between the two schools with Bowling Green holding a slight 24-21 advantage but Akron has won 10 of their last 11 meetings
- Zips head coach Keith Dambrot is 11-4 lifetime against Bowling Green (10-1 at Akron).
- The win put Dambrot into a tie for third place on Akron’s all-time wins list with 125.
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