vs. Kent State (1/23)

[mbenecke]

Michael Burwell of the Toledo Blade reported this evening that Sam Towns is dressed and went through pregame warmups tonight. We’ll see if he plays - would be huge to have him back available.

[Falconfreak90]

Down 20-11 at the 12 min TO. KSU shooting 50% and BG 25%.

[mbenecke]

Tied 35-35 at halftime.

Gotta keep grinding.

[Falconfreak90]

Tied 35-35 at halftime.

Gotta keep grinding.

Way to come back from 10 down to get back to even...now take it home, fellas.

[fanatic13]

Free throws and getting Kent in foul trouble saved us that half. We allowed too many straight line drives and offensive rebounds. Also had 8 turnovers to their 4

Lucky to be tied here but no reason we can't win this half of we clean it up

[fanatic13]

Towns is still on the end of the bench

[mbenecke]

Ugh. 2 straight bad defensive possessions from a loss of focus. We didn’t recover well enough from a double team the first time, and then Spurgin looked like he was bleeding and he was worried about that and couldn’t close out the 2nd time. Gives Kent 2 huge threes and they lead by 6.

Gonna have to figure out a way to recover from that. This has been a heck of a battle against the team that won the MAC tournament last year. We definitely belong.

[Falconfreak90]

That's a tough loss there....we had our chance to win it in regulation and then KSU hits a quick 5 to start OT.

The next one is the most important.

#BeatToledo

[BGSU33]

Dagger of a loss man. Kent State entered the game having lost 6 of their last 8 games, including 4 of their last 5, and as I was afraid and expected, beat BG for the 9th straight time, this one in OT on our own floor. GD man…

[guest44]

A dagger of a loss? Not really. Could have folded multiple times and had a chance to win in regulation. The program is in a really good place with the right coach. 14-5 and 5-2 in the MAC is a great place to be after years of watching Buffalo come in and drop 100 on us with a now fired coach. Beat Toledo.

[BGorDeath]

Kent's Sullinger is fast. Real fast. Very hard for us to stop him.

[hammb]

A couple of weaknesses reared their heads on the same night. One is we're far too reliant on Hill. We just don't have any other guards capable of creating much of anything. They trapped the s**t out of him, he didn't do a good job out of it, when he did get the ball out we didn't keep it popping to punish them for over committing to him. Hill also had a real rough night finishing in traffic which is usually a strength. I don't think he'll go 5-19 too often so I'm not overly concerned but we do need somebody else to at least win 1-on-1 if they're committing to him.

The bigger concern for me is our defense has really struggled in MAC play to force misses. KSU got what they wanted all night and shot 49% from the field. MAC opponents are shooting that well against us almost every night. We've overcome it a lot but that's flirting with disaster.

We rebound well and dominated the glass tonight. We get to the line a ton and lived there tonight. You shouldn't lose games if you're +10 in rebounds and +10 FT points but the turnovers stung and we couldn't shoot from 3 at all.

[Matty B]

Man those losses hurt. Just couldn't get the big one to drop. The foul call on Spurgins block hurt, would have given us the ball with a chance to go up 3 or 4 late.

Still ended up with a couple chances at the end of regulation to win it. Want to see the inbound with 2 seconds left again. I thought he was open for a bunny but from my angle I couldn't see if spurgin fumbled it or just trapped himself under the backboard. We had 2 timeouts at the time, kinda surprised we didn't use one if he was in a bad spot but again I thought we had spurgin open.

Then Agee had a nice look in OT to tie it with under 30 and it rimmed out. Just felt like we needed one big one to drop and could never get it. That's basketball, but those are tough to get over when you know you were inches from winning on more than one occasion.

Let's see how this team rebounds vs Toledo. A win puts us at 6-2 and in the clear top 2, a loss puts us at 5-3 and suddenly in the scrum of teams fighting to get to Cleveland. Gotta have this one Saturday!

[guest44]

Kent made a bunch of the timely 3’s and BG did not. Some of that was on some poor rotations defensively. To me this a game we could have used DJ Smith and his quickness defensively. Just another body to throw at Sullinger once he got going early on.

That Kent team will be right in the thick of it come Cleveland like they always are. Part of the growing pains of building a program is beating the teams who’ve been there and done that. BG had chances in regulation to lay down and early in overtime. They did not. They had a 3 point lead with 1:30 to go and Kent hit a three to tie, and Agee had a shot to tie after getting down in OT. This team will battle. The schedule gets pretty light after Saturday and a top 2-4 seed is still very much attainable for the MAC Tournament.

[mbenecke]

Big one on Saturday. A win would be massive, but I’m just looking for us to go on the road and compete for 40 minutes to show we belong with the teams at the top of this league. Far too often the last few years we have gone up there and gotten blown out.

I’m sure it’ll be a huge crowd. Kind of an opportunity for our gladiators to walk into the coliseum where everyone hates them and walk out victorious. Let’s see what happens.

Like guest said, the schedule gets lighter after this one, so I’m not gonna panic if we don’t get the dub.