Falcons soar over MAC

OXFORD, Ohio - In this century, no basketball team in the Mid-American Conference owns more regular season championships than the Bowling Green State University women's basketball team.

The Falcons claimed a sixth straight outright regular season title last night by holding off Miami University 63-58 victory at Millett Hall.

An excited and relieved Falcons squad gathered at center court after the final second ticked off the clock to celebrate the latest title. They were cheered on by supporters in attendance that made up a good portion of the announced crowd of 575.

"We're excited to be the outright MAC champs for six years in a row," BG coach Curt Miller said. "Certainly, a dream season for us to be able to pull that off, winning another championship."

The Falcons (24-6, 14-2 MAC) entered the regular season finale already owning at least a share of the regular season title. But they approached the game knowing a win over the RedHawks (8-21, 6-10 MAC) guaranteed extending their dominance to a half-dozen unshared titles.

As it turned out, the Falcons would have owned another outright title even with a loss after the University of Toledo was defeated by Eastern Michigan.

Nonetheless, Lauren Prochaska pumped in a game-high 25 points, including four 3-pointers, to lead the Falcons to a win that also secured the No. 1 seed for the MAC Tournament and the conference's automatic bid for the women's National Invitational Tournament.

Tamika Nurse and Tracy Pontius provided 13 and 12 points, respectively, on one of the Falcons' worst shooting nights of the season. BG sank only 18 of 62 shots (29 percent) for the game.

"It's a huge win for us," Prochaska said. "Obviously, we wanted to get it [MAC titles] to six in a row and that's what it was all about tonight."

Coming out on top and closing out the regular season schedule was priority No. 1 for the Falcons, who made 16 of 20 free throws in the second half.

"It was a little scary there for a while but we took care of business and did what we needed to do," said Prochaska, who finished 9-for-10 from the foul line.

BG struggled to put away a team it disposed of by 20 points earlier in the season at Anderson Arena. The Falcons were outrebounded (46-44) and never led by more than nine points.

The Falcons celebrated the win, but the performance raised some concerns for Miller

"Certainly, [there are] a lot of areas where you can't look at a stat sheet and think we won tonight," Miller said. "So we have eight days to try to figure out what to correct and how to attack this Miami team better because there's a strong likelihood we can get them again [in the MAC Tournament]."

The Falcons made only 12 of 34 shots (35.3 percent) before halftime, including a 6-for-17 effort from behind the 3-point stripe. The RedHawks shot even worse than BG in the first half. They sank only nine of 30 shot attempts in the first half and finished only 18 of 57 (32 percent).

Furthermore, the two teams combined for 22 turnovers (BG 10, Miami 12) during the opening half before BG finished the game with 18 while Miami was guilty of 20.

Contact Donald Emmons at:

demmons@theblade.com

or 419-724-6302.

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Bowling Green players rush the court after securing a sixth consecutive regular-season crown. Enlarge

In this century, no basketball team in the Mid-American Conference owns more regular season championships than the Bowling Green State University women's basketball team. The Falcons claimed a sixth straight outright regular season title Tuesday night by holding off Miami University 63-58 victory at Millett Hall.