The mark of a good team is being able to close games out.
While the jury is still out on how good the Bowling Green men’s basketball team is this season, the Falcons are finding ways to win at the end.
Last Saturday Bowling Green rallied for a 76-70 win at Kent State, out-scoring the Golden Flashes 16-6 to close things out.
Wednesday night in Anderson Arena, the Falcons shut out Ohio University 11-0 over the final 3:57 to record a 65-57 victory. The game featured six ties and 13 lead changes in the second half.
Defense was again a staple for the Falcons in the late going.
“We came together as a team, and we decided that we needed to get stops to win,” said BG’s Erik Marschall, a fifth-year senior. “That’s been our mind-set all year. Some games we’ve struggled doing that. In the games that we’ve won, we gotten stops at the end of games.”
Ohio’s Armon Bassett, who played two seasons at Indiana, scored on a drive to the basket with 3:57 left to play, giving Ohio a 57-54 lead.
After Bassett’s hoop, the Bobcats were 0-of-6 from the field, including 0-of-3 on 3-pointers, and had two turnovers on their final eight possessions.
“That’s a championship effort against a team that is talented and came in here hungry,” BG head coach Louis Orr said about the Falcons’ defense in the late going. “We got the stops and didn’t allow the second shots.”
Marschall had one of the key defensive plays down the stretch, taking a charge on freshman Jay Kinney with 1:33 to play in the game and BG holding a 59-57 lead.
“That’s a pretty big play,” Marschall said. “Coach is always talking about that we need to take charges, get ourself two steps out of the lane. I don’t think I was out of the lane.
“He was a young kid. He came in out of control and I was able to slip in there, set up and take the charge,” Marschall continued. “I wasn’t sure (it was going to be called a charge) because earlier (teammate) Marc Larson had taken what really should have been a charge, I thought. He took one for the team, but the call didn’t go our way. That’s part of basketball.”
On the ensuing possession Scott Thomas hit a fade-away jumper with 1:05 to play, to put the Falcons up four, 61-57. It was one of only two baskets the Falcons scored in the final 5:05 of the game.
Offensively down the stretch the Falcons were able to get to the free-throw line. After not shooting a free-throw in the first half, BG was 18-of-25 from the line in the second half, making 9-of-12 in the final 3:32 of the game. Thomas led the way making 9-of-10 for the game.
“We changed up our offense a little bit,” Marschall said about the final minutes. “We were running a play we call ‘hold’ and instead of reversing the ball (we didn’t, and) they were not able to push us out so far. We were getting some movement. The guards were hitting some shots earlier and that open up some things down low.”
The Falcons started the game quickly, building a nine-point lead, 12-3, with 12:54 to play in the first half. Ohio rallied and led by 10, 29-29, with 54 seconds left in the half. Joe Jakubowski’s layup cut Ohio’s lead to eight at the break. Jakubowski kept the Falcons in the game in the opening half, scoring 13 of his season-high 18 points in the first 20 minutes.
“He definitely opened things up for the bigs inside,” Marschall said about Jakubowski, who was 4-of-5 on 3-pointers for the game. “Without Joe hitting shots, they were pretty big and pretty physical down low, I don’t think we get as easy of shots as we did in the second half.”
The Falcons got a quick start to the second half, by getting the ball inside to score six points. After BG’s quick start neither team led by more than four points until the Falcons pulled away at the end.
“We’re disappointed in the way we played defensively in the second half, certainly not to take anything away from them because I thought they executed very well,” said Ohio head coach Jim Groce.
In addition to Jakubowski’s 18 points and three assists, Thomas had 16 points, five rebounds and three assists and Marschall finished with 12 points and a game-high nine rebounds along with two assists, two steals and a block.
“This was definitely one of those grind it out games. It wasn’t a work of art,” Orr said. “You have to win these kind of games it you want to compete for championships.”
NOTES: BG is now 9-7 overall and 2-2 in the MAC while Ohio is 9-9, 0-4 ... BG scored 26 points in the paint ... Four of BG’s five starters played 31 or more minutes ... Bowling Green play at Miami Saturday with tipoff at 3 p.m. |
