BOWLING GREEN — Todd Simon wants the Bowling Green State University men’s basketball team to be filled with energy every time the Falcons compete.

And that doesn’t just include the five players at a time on the court.

“We’re going to be relentlessly enthusiastic. Our bench culture, we get a bench warning every game, and if we don’t, I’m disappointed,” Simon said during Thursday’s news conference introducing the former Southern Utah mentor as the Falcons’ new coach. “No one ever makes a 3 in front of our bench, that’s our key rule.”

The passion, energy, and high-scoring style of play that helped turn a Southern Utah program that struggled mightily in the mid-2010s into a consistent 20-win team will be heading to northwest Ohio. With Simon’s hiring as the 18th men’s basketball coach in BGSU history, the Falcons will be hoping to become a program that regularly competes for Mid-American Conference championships and could perhaps end a 55-year NCAA tournament drought.

Simon, who went 118-106 in seven seasons (65-28 the past three) at Southern Utah, has learned a lot in his coaching journey that stretches back to 2002. The 42-year-old Fowler, a Michigan native, learned under legendary coach Lon Kruger (674 college and 69 NBA coaching wins), led one of the best high school teams in the nation (Findlay Prep in Nevada) to a 35-1 record in the 2012-13 season, went a respectable 9-8 as an interim coach at University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and rebuilt a Southern Utah program into a winner.

“He is a terrific basketball coach that prioritizes family, and I look forward to following his continued success at Bowling Green,” Kruger said in a news release. “Todd is a guy that knows basketball and his teams play extremely hard. They are always well prepared, and it will be fun for Bowling Green fans to watch his teams perform.”

Simon has gone through many trials and tribulations. But it has led to an up-tempo style of play that has been the highlight of the Thunderbirds the past three seasons.

“Early on, we were the No. 1 defense in the Big Sky [Conference] and we were long and athletic, and I said ‘You know what, I don’t even like watching this. It’s great, but I want to score,’” Simon said. “... That next year, sitting with some friends from the NBA, they said ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’

“So what we became is more offensive oriented, and if you follow college basketball, they keep tweaking the rules to be pro-offense. So using that to our advantage, we went more pro-offense, we were the No. 3 scoring team in the nation the very next year and went 20-4, and that worked. We learned through those seven years and eight years now being a head coach of trials, you get some checks in all these things.”

The offensive statistics speak for themselves. Southern Utah (22-12) ranks fourth in the NCAA in scoring this season at 82.7 points per game.

The Thunderbirds’ 84.2 points per game were third in the NCAA in the 2020-21 season, and they averaged 77.7 points in the 2021-22 campaign when they recorded the second-most wins (23) in program history at the Division I level.

“Obviously, it’s a challenge to get guys to come to your school across college basketball, and he’s proven he can do that. He can get guys to believe in his system, his philosophy, and he’s had a lot of guys have success, guys that come and play for him and flourish,” said UNLV coach Kevin Kruger, Lon Kruger’s son. “I think it just kind of speaks to his ability of getting them to buy in, getting them to understand and excel in the roles that they have that help win games because it’s hard to win college basketball games.

“He’s certainly figured out ways to put guys in spots, create advantages for him, and let them play without getting discouraged. That’s a challenge in itself, and he’s done that really well.”

From 2013-17, Southern Utah averaged just six wins per season, including a 6-27 record in Simon’s first year as coach (2016-17).

BGSU is coming off an 11-20 campaign and a second-straight year of failing to make the MAC tournament. The Falcons likely will  have plenty of new faces in the program — at least six players from the 2022-23 roster have entered the transfer portal since previous coach Michael Huger was fired in early March.

Simon said he wants to have players who will take pride in representing BGSU.

“We want to be a blue-collar program that when you come to a game in those 40 minutes, you’re going to see an all-out effort. You’re going to see a passion,” he said. “Our players are going to play free and with joy, and I think all those things that I’ve seen so far in 24 hours in this experience, I think it’s going to be embodied with what we want to be on the floor.

“It’s going to be a program that you can be proud of, that when you go and say ‘I’m from Bowling Green,’ they want them to say ‘They’ve got a heckuva basketball program.’ That’s our goal, to kind of get it to that point.”

First Published March 19, 2023, 10:40 p.m.