Falcons, Rockets enter contest hot

Toledo's Richard Wonnell, right, battles for a rebound in a game against Ohio on Wednesday. The Genoa graduate, who plays for UT as a walk-on, has started the last two games for the Rockets, who are 11-13 overall and 3-7 in Mid-American Conference play. THE BLADE/LORI KING Enlarge | Photo Reprints

BOWLING GREEN -- Two of the hotter men's basketball teams in the Mid-American Conference will meet at the Stroh Center at 4 p.m. Saturday.

Bowling Green State University, winners of three in a row, will host the University of Toledo, the only West Division team with more than one victory against East Division opponents.

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This game is about more than wins and losses, or positioning a team for the best possible Mid-American Conference tournament seed.

Both sides agree: The rivalry is the key.

"I think rivalry games do mean more," Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk said. "I think it means more to the fans. It means more to the media. If we as coaches and players don't acknowledge that I think we're kidding ourselves.

"I'm not going to give cliche coach talk and say it's just another game because it's not just another game."

Bowling Green junior forward A'uston Calhoun echoed that feeling.

"You know it will be an exciting atmosphere when we play [Toledo]. There aren't many games where you'll have a crowd that large and really intense, like we'll have for this [game]," he said. "This is the type of game college athletes play for."

Local fans are responding to the rivalry, as only 200 seats remain for the contest. BG will sell standing-room-only seats Saturday starting at 1 p.m.

Even if the game didn't feature a rivalry angle, both teams would have plenty on the line.

For BG, a win keeps alive the team's chances at earning one of the four byes in the MAC tournament. The Falcons are 6-4 in league play and fifth overall, trailing two fourth-place teams (Ohio and Kent State) by one game.

The Rockets home win over Ohio on Wednesday gives them a 3-7 MAC mark, tied with Miami for ninth. UT trails West Division rivals Ball State and Western Michigan by one game in the race for a first-round home game in the league tournament.

Calhoun said he and his BG teammates can tell Toledo is a team that is more talented than its record shows.

"You can see they are a talented team when you watch the film," he said of the Rockets.

"But they also play hard. They play tough and with intensity every night."

For the Falcons, coach Louis Orr said the reasons for his team's recent success start with the defense.

"Defensively, I look at field-goal percentage defense, and in [four of the last five] games we've held teams under 40 percent in field-goal shooting and under 30 percent on 3's," Orr said. "Other than the Central [Michigan] game our rebounding has been pretty solid.

"And the offensive end we've been pretty efficient. We've shot at a pretty high field-goal percentage and we've cut down on our turnovers, and we've had fewer 'empty' possessions."

It isn't enough to be playing well, Toledo's Matt Smith said, because rivalries are different.

"We're not playing for ourselves. We're playing more for the tradition of the programs," Smith said. "It's a huge game for us but it's a bigger game for everybody who graduated from here, like Steve Mix.

"Coach said we'll only remember 10-15 games after our career, and I'm pretty sure this rivalry will be one of them."

NOTE: Junior Dominique Buckley did not participate in Toledo's practice Friday because of the flu. Kowalczyk said Buckley is expected to play against the Falcons.

Blade sports writer Ryan Autullo contributed to this report.

Contact John Wagner at: jwagner@theblade.com, 419-724-6481 or on Twitter @jwagnerblade.