BOWLING GREEN — The federal budget. The last-call crowd on Main Street. The Tower of Pisa.
All are more balanced than the Bowling Green-Akron basketball series in recent years.
Heading into Tuesday, Akron had won 29 of their past 32 meetings, the games often as competitive as a sledgehammer against a pane of glass.
Thanks for playing, Falcons.
But history is nothing if not an ongoing story, as Bowling Green proved here in resounding form at an electrified Stroh Center.
In a first-place showdown and the game of the Mid-American Conference year, a Falcons team out to rewrite the past blew away one narrative in their 78-60 waxing of the Zips.
Now, it’s on to the next one, the big one, and, for a program in pursuit of its first trip to the NCAA tournament since before man walked on the moon, Bowling Green confirmed that moonshot dream is very much within reach.
Before the most raucous midweek crowd in the nine-year history of Stroh — the announced crowd of 2,925 sounded like triple that — the home team started strong and never slowed.
The just-find-a-way-Falcons — the ones who were 14-2 in games decided by seven or fewer points — became the run-em-off-the-floor Falcons, delivering a statement that no doubt evoked double takes across the league.
This was Bowling Green near its biceps-flexing best, timely and balanced on offense and a terror on defense.
The Falcons made Akron work for everything, rotating as if their scholarships depended on it to shut down the endless fleet of shooters surrounding star guard Loren Cristian Jackson, who finished with the quietest 35 points you will ever see. The Zips — the most complete offensive team in the league and its best 3-point shooting team — were a cool 1-for-20 from beyond the arc in the first half as BG opened a 40-25 lead.
Sure, some of this was Akron having a historically bad night. Freddie Falcon would have enjoyed more success slinging blindfolded shots from halfcourt.
But make no mistake, the Falcons had plenty to do with it.
“Our guys played extremely hard,” BG coach Michael Huger said. “This is the defense I’ve been looking for for a long time, and it showed up tonight. I’m extremely pleased and proud of what we did.”
As I suspect the fans were, too, with the Falcons pouring it on from wire to wire and help coming from all corners, from the reunited Big Three — Justin Turner (19 points), Dylan Frye (16 points), and Daeqwon Plowden (10 points, 13 rebounds) — to the half dozen reserves who played meaningful minutes.
That included senior forward Marlon Sierra, who tripled his total number of made 3-pointers in conference play with a pair of, well, triples in a game-clinching 40-second burst midway through the second half.
After a 21-point lead had narrowed to 13, Bowling Green answered with a 9-2 run punctuated by back-to-back 3s from Sierra, the first of which died on the rim — prompting a smiling shrug — the second a heat check that swished in.
The place lost it.
What a night.
As much as we tend to view everything through the prism of March, the ride there is worth savoring, too, and this was one of those games you remember, the win big for two reasons.
For one, the obvious: Bowling Green — a game up on Akron with three remaining — is now on the brink of an outright regular-season league title, which is no small feat. Consider: Since Toledo’s most recent tourney appearance in 1980, our two schools have won the outright league title three times. Bowling Green won in 1983 and 2000, Toledo in 2007. That’s it. Again, savor the ride.
For another, OK, fine, it was perhaps a herald of changing March winds.
While the month was invented to break Bowling Green’s heart — and the Falcons will be only a bad shooting night at the MAC tournament away from their tourney drought reaching an unfathomable 53 years — Tuesday suggested it is the class of an up-for-grabs league.
A team ready to take its biggest March swing in a generation.
Can history be rewritten by the victors?
First Published February 26, 2020, 4:33 a.m.
