BOWLING GREEN — It was not long ago Bowling Green had one of the best mid-major women’s basketball programs in the country.
The Falcons won 21 or more games in 11 consecutive seasons starting in 2003-04 and earned five NCAA tournament bids during that span, advancing to the Sweet 16 in 2007.
A program that since has lost its way is hoping for a return to its old form, and Bowling Green has tasked Robyn Fralick with a full rebuild that officially begins Tuesday at Michigan State.
Fralick, the former Ashland University coach, has a long history of success at the Division II level, and the new coaching staff is in the midst of installing at BG what has been a winning culture in the past.
The new era for Bowling Green presents an uncertain future but so far, Fralick is happy with the players’ response to a new a voice leading the program.
“They have not been resistant to change at all,” Fralick said at a news conference last week. “They’ve been very welcoming and engaging of it. As a coaching staff and [with] us all being new, we’re very thankful they’ve been so receptive to change.”
Change is exactly what Bowling Green sought with its offseason moves. Bowling Green fired former coach Jennifer Roos after last season and hired Fralick after a nationwide search for the next coach.
The Falcons went 30-5 under Roos during the 2013-14 season, but the program subsequently took a nosedive. Bowling Green couldn’t maintain its success on the recruiting trail, which manifested with four consecutive losing seasons during which BG topped out at 11 wins per season.
Although she has not been at the Division I level since she was a player at Davidson, Fralick is not accustomed to losing. She has, for the time being, the highest winning percentage — a remarkable 97.2 percent — for anyone in NCAA history who has coached more than 100 games.
In her three years at Ashland, Fralick posted a 104-3 record and her teams advanced to two Division II national championship games, winning once.
For all of Fralick’s on-court success, one of her first acts at Bowling Green has been to focus on togetherness outside of basketball.
The Falcons have made off-court team-building a core tenet. The thought-process: A team that gets along away from basketball has a natural advantage on the floor.
“I think it’s so valuable, and coach Fralick has definitely put an emphasis on it this year,” senior guard Sydney Lambert said. “She just says that if you don’t love each other, you won’t fight for each other, so we’re trying to get that trust level so we do love each and do fight for each other day-in and day-out.”
In Fralick’s program, she said chemistry will be a must.
“It is absolutely required of a team, and I don’t believe you can be a team unless you’re a team on and off the court,” Fralick said. “I genuinely believe to fight for each other on the court, you have to know each other in a meaningful way. It’s been fun watching them invest in that.”
Outside of the program, little is expected of the Falcons, especially with two programs in the Mid-American Conference — division rival Buffalo and Central Michigan — on the fringe of the top 25.
BG will be thrown into the fire from the start with a season-opening game against the Spartans, but Fralick and her staff are in search of consistency at the smallest levels. She said she wants BG to grow used to putting together consecutive good possessions and stack positive practices one after another.
A return to old ways is the long-term goal for Bowling Green’s program.
For this season at least, the Falcons are in search of tangible growth.
“I want to see them transform, and that can be hard short-term to see, but long-term it’s very visible,” Fralick said. “It can be tangible long-term. … When consistency becomes an every-day thing, growth absolutely becomes part of it.”
First Published November 4, 2018, 6:28 p.m.
