CLEVELAND — One more time, the March bell tolled for northwest Ohio on Saturday night, the confetti raining and still the drought enduring.
As always, the dance belonged to someone else.
It was fun while it lasted, Bowling Green.
On the brink of the greatest college hoops fairy tale our area has ever seen, the Falcons fell to Buffalo 87-73 in the Mid-American Conference tournament championship on Saturday night.
No, it was not the ending they wanted.
And it is fair for Falcons fans who have waited since before man first walked on the moon for another trip to the NCAA tournament to wonder: Will the madness ... ever begin?
Only Dartmouth (1959) and Tennessee Tech (1963) have longer tourney droughts than BG (1968).
But, in defeat and despair, the Falcons did themselves proud to the end just the same.
If their supporters desperately wanted this victory — “I’ve had Tums the last couple of days,” athletic director Bob Moosbrugger confided afterward — the team wanted it more.
Bowling Green threw everything it had at the powerhouse Bulls, outmuscling the best and most physical team in the league all night — the Falcons outrebounded them 48-34 — and willing their way back in to the game.
After falling behind by 15 points in the first half, Bowling Green swung back. A 3-pointer by Justin Turner in the opening minute of the second half gave the Falcons their first lead of the game, and the 11-point underdogs continued to match the Bulls score for score until a final Buffalo deluge.
In the end, a very good team lost to an all-time great MAC team and, in that, there was no shame.
As Kool and the Gang blared from the speakers celebrating Buffalo’s fourth league title in five years, the fans in orange — who filled four sections and scattered throughout the Quicken Loans Arena crowd of 7,813 — gave the Falcons a deserved standing ovation.
This is a team fans will savor forever.
For all the very good Bowling Green teams of the past five decades — the teams of David Greer and David Jenkins and Michael Huger and Antonio Daniels and Anthony Stacey and Keith McLeod — the wonder of it all is this one was the least likely to threaten the drought.
Remember, these Falcons were near unanimously picked to finish last in the MAC.
And why not?
Here was a program that could not have nice things.
Its one winning season in the previous nine years? It came in 2015 under Chris Jans, who was then fired for his off-the-court nonsense.
In his replacement, Bowling Green found a first-class person, but one who appeared to confirm what they say about nice guys is true. Huger became the first coach in program history to open his tenure with three straight nonwinning seasons, then had the bottom fall out this year.
After three players transferred in the spring, BG lost five of its first nine games, including an 18-point defeat at 21-loss Cleveland State.
It felt like the end, the roaring nights at Anderson Arena never more of a sepia-toned memory.
Yet, the story was just beginning.
This became the team — so fun and fearless and tough — that made Bowling Green fans love again.
After the loss to Cleveland State and a fumigating, clear-the-air meeting, the bulb flipped on, a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-pieces puzzle fitting together perfectly.
Turner developed into a first-team all-league star, Demajeo Wiggins kept doing his thing, and a nine-deep roster cast in the iron will of its coach became one of the best stories in the country.
Where to begin? The 11-2 league start. The 14-2 record at the Stroh Center. The bring-down-the-house win over Buffalo. The third-place league finish.
“We will be one of the teams they remember,” Huger said, before lamenting, “we would have really been remembered if we won tonight. It is what it is.”
“These guys did a lot not only on the court but on the campus in trying to get people back involved in basketball,” Moosbrugger said. “There’s a renewed enthusiasm, and I think the future is bright.”
The last part remains to be seen. It is hard to say if the year was a springboard or — after losing Wiggins, Antwon Lillard, and Jeffrey Uju — an island in a sea of the ordinary.
My bet is we haven’t seen the last of these Falcons.
But, either way, the memories of 2019 will live on.
What a team. What a ride.
First Published March 17, 2019, 4:17 a.m.
