BOWLING GREEN — The scene was a Huntington, W.Va., hotel, and the news was good.
A few hours winding hours north, Ohio had taken care of Kent State in Athens on the final day of the 1999-2000 Mid-American Conference regular season, and the 81-71 score spread quickly through Bowling Green’s team.
With Kent State’s loss, Bowling Green needed only to beat Marshall to win the MAC title — and the Falcons did just that later the same day, becoming one of only three BGSU men’s basketball teams to win the regular-season MAC championship during the past 35 years.
Twenty years have passed, Marshall is long gone from the MAC, and the players have moved onto careers and families, but they’ll travel down memory lane for at least this weekend during a reunion Saturday at the Stroh Center.
“I know everybody talks about time flies, but man, it doesn't seem like it was 20 years,” said Anthony Stacey, a senior that season and a current assistant coach on Michael Huger’s staff at BG.
The 2000 Falcons arguably were Bowling Green’s best team since its 1960s heyday, boasting the program’s top two all-time leading scorers in Stacey and Keith McLeod, another top-10 scorer in Len Matela, who ranks ninth, and three more players who crossed the 1,000-point barrier during their BG careers.
Coached by current ESPN color commentator and radio personality Dan Dakich — who is scheduled to be in attendance for BG’s 4:30 p.m. game Saturday against Ohio — the collection of personalities became one of the program’s most memorable.
Former center Brent Klassen became its unofficial historian, the owner of an unsurpassed collection of BGSU game tapes that he has carried with him through many interstate moves and digitized along the way. Realizing that this season would be the 2000 team’s 20-year anniversary, Klassen began making the push for its reunion at a game this season.
“I think that’s in my genes. I’m a big reminiscer,” Klassen said. “I’m not a hoarder, but I’m a hoarder of memories, I guess.”
Stacey and fellow senior Dave Esterkamp came of age at Bowling Green during a golden era for MAC basketball.
From 1995 to 2003, the MAC was home to Gary Trent, Antonio Daniels, Bonzi Wells, Wally Szczerbiak, and Chris Kaman, and that was just the NBA draft lottery picks.
“I don’t mean to sound like an old man here, but I tell people this all the time: We always had lottery picks,” Esterkamp said. “Every year, we had a lottery pick. The MAC was just full of versatile kids who weren't going to go big time [in college], but had something to prove.”
Originally recruited by Jim Larranaga, Stacey and Esterkamp became driving forces for Dakich’s best teams at BG. Asked for his first impression of Dakich, Stacey chuckled simply because it was the same as everyone else on the team: That this new coach was outside of his mind.
But as Stacey moved onto a pro career overseas and his own venture into coaching, he said gained a new appreciation for his years at Bowling Green.
“As you play for him and as you get older, you realize that ‘Doc’ wasn't all that crazy,” Stacey said. “He was just pushing all of us to be the very best to prepare us for life. Now, we can all appreciate that.”
Every time he was warned about hard coaching abroad, Stacey couldn’t help shake his head.
“They would say, 'You're going to play for this coach, and he's hard, he's crazy,’” Stacey said. “Then I'd go to practice and be like, 'Man, they don't know what hard and crazy is.'”
Bowling Green finished 22-6 during the regular season that year, but the ending was a cruel reminder of the reality for even the best teams in mid-major leagues: Conference tournaments are valued above all else.
And for Bowling Green, a desperation 3-point heave from Miami’s Jason Grunkemeyer — now a Ball State assistant and one of Stacey’s good friends in coaching — forced an overtime that saw Miami knock out BG in the MAC quarterfinals.
That led to an ill-fated Selection Show watch party to which Bowling Green invited the local media. Nervousness eventually turned into resignation as the Falcons were left out, with cameras documenting every moment, to boot, and they eventually ended their year with a blowout loss at BYU in the NIT.
Klassen remembered seeing broadcasts of on-the-bubble teams in previous years and hoping that never happened to his team.
“I would never really laugh, but I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that stinks. I’d hate to be on TV for that,’” Klassen recalled.
Though the 2000 Falcons were unable to end BG’s NCAA tournament drought — now at 52 years — they hold almost exclusively happy memories of their time in college.
The group bonded through the brutal summer workouts and the snow-marred trips through the MAC, stories that undoubtedly be unearthed this weekend over dinner.
“When you go through something tough with other people, it brings you closer together, and that was definitely it,” Klassen said. “You couldn’t help but stay together and bond with all those things happening.”
Nearly the entire group will be back Saturday. Though life has taken the former Falcons all over the world, to a man, they remember the way Anderson Arena rocked 20 years ago.
“I remember all the winning teams I played on, but that one is one of my favorites,” Esterkamp said. “It’s just a bond that doesn’t go away.”
First Published February 21, 2020, 9:23 p.m.
