BG's Miller reining it in

BGSU coach Curt Miller disputes a call. THE BLADE Enlarge | Photo Reprints

BOWLING GREEN — The Bowling Green women's basketball coaching staff has long teased head coach Curt Miller about needing a hobby.

The truth of the matter is, Miller used to have a hobby: film study. But his recent health scare has caused Miller to cut back on his film study.

"Through the years, I watched a minimum of seven game tapes and somewhere around 15 hours of film on an opponent before we play — every game," Miller explained. "To do that, you have to have some all-nighters. Because of that [film work], I can learn tendencies on teams and players that perhaps they don't know. What play do they run out of timeouts? What plays do they run at certain times of the game? What defenses do they run at certain times of the game?"

Miller used his team's upcoming schedule to explain how he would have prepared for the week before his mild stroke.

"On Tuesday, I start to work on our weekend opponent — in this case, Akron," he said. "On game day [Wednesday], I'm watching Akron even though we're getting ready to play Buffalo. When the [Buffalo] game ends, I do the press conference, I walk out of the arena, I get home at 9:30 p.m., I hug my family, and get something to eat.

"Then at 10 o'clock I would watch film on Akron — until the middle of [Thursday] morning. I just can't do that any more. I have to be smarter now."

The mild stroke Miller suffered in the home win over Eastern Michigan Jan. 22 has cut back on his film study. And Miller said the lack of film study led him to question his judgment entering the final offensive set against the Rockets.

"My instinct was that Toledo switches [on defense] late in games, but because I hadn't watched the amount of film that I have for my 10 years at BG, I questioned my judgment whether they would switch or not," he said. "I didn't trust my first instinct.

"Did we make a poor read on the play? Certainly, we didn't execute. But did I make a call that could have been better? Yes, it could have been. I'm not going to put the onus [for a loss] on 18 to 22-year-olds; I second-guessed myself late in the huddle, and it was because I didn't have the filmwork I normally put into a game."

While the final offensive play wasn't a good one, it was a fitting conclusion to a second half that saw the Falcons struggle offensively. BG shot just 6-for-26 from the floor, or 23.1 percent — including 0-for-9 on 3-pointers — and committed five turnovers to score on just eight of 32 second-half possessions and finish with 17 points in the half.

"Give Toledo a lot of credit for taking away our penetration," Miller said when asked about his team's second-half troubles. "We have to get the ball in the paint, either through penetration or low-post catches. We didn't get it in there the amount of times we needed to.

"And with that said, we were one punch away from winning a huge game. When you look at some of the shots we did miss, we felt we got enough [good] looks to land that one punch. We just didn't get the ball to go in [the basket]."

While Chrissy Steffen (20 points) and Alexis Rogers (17 points) provided offense, those combined 37 points meant the rest of the team scored just 13 points. Especially noticeable were the struggles of Jessica Slagle, who went 2-for-14 from the field, and Jasmine Matthews, who was 0-for-6 from the field and missed all five of her 3-point attempts.

"We needed a third scorer to beat Toledo," Miller said. "We got good offensive performances from Chrissy and [Alexis]. We were just one scorer away — in a big game against a talented team, you need that third scorer."

Despite all the negatives surrounding BG's first league loss, and the end of its 13-game win streak, Miller saw some positives from the defeat.

"We had only two people [on our roster] who had walked onto the court at Savage Arena and played there, and those two kids had never started there," Miller said. "But our team didn't back down, and I was really proud of them.

"What I learned [Monday] morning was how the team was going to react to its first loss since before Christmas. I wanted to see how they practiced today, and they were upbeat and hungry.

"No one talked about Toledo — all we did was talk about and prepare for Buffalo. And Jasmine Matthews shot the ball incredibly."

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