A glance at last year’s record and one could infer that Michael Huger’s second season leading Bowling
Green’s men’s basketball team was a regression. A deeper look would show that his team took steps toward
what he is building.
Bowling Green never consistently performed the way anybody in the program wanted it to. Injuries had
something to do with the results, and so did youth and even selfishness at times.
There wasn’t one factor that held the Falcons back, the same as it wasn’t one factor that took them
forward when everybody saw the glimpses of a high-caliber team.
“We’ve done some really good things. It was just hard to be consistent,” Huger said. “That was the thing.
… You’re still building it and you’re still trying to get it the right way and yet it’s still not
quite what you want it to be. But you don’t stop trying. You don’t stop trying to be consistent. You
don’t stop working hard. You don’t stop trying to help these guys to do other things.”
Bowling Green finished 13-19 last season, including a 7-11 mark in the Mid-American Conference — a
two-game improvement from Huger’s first season. There were a couple of last-second losses, and a few
last-second wins. There was a win over Toledo, and a win over Akron, snapping a 17-game losing streak to
the Zips.
With early-season injuries to freshman Justin Turner and junior Jeff Uju, players were out of position
all season and depth was often challenged.
It all meant that freshmen would have to make an impact, and they did. Dylan Frye and Rodrick Caldwell
showed that they were two of the most promising freshmen in the MAC. Frye averaged 8.9 points per game
and was named to the league’s all-freshman team. He’ll be asked to do even more next year.
“Everyone is excited about Dylan now,” Huger said. “Now it’s year two, and I told him it doesn’t stop
now. Everybody knows who he is and he can’t hide now. … So they’re going to plan to stop him.
“This is the time where you put that work in to improve your game. You have to get bigger and you have to
get stronger, and he has to be able to defend better.”
Frye and Caldwell will be asked to fight to keep their spots in the lineup. They combined for 27 starts
and both played in all 32 games. They, along with Demajeo Wiggins and Antwon Lillard, will be leaned on
heavily next season.
Wiggins will be Bowling Green leading returning scorer after averaging 10 ppg as a sophomore.
With the graduation of Zack Denny, Ismail Ali and Wes Alcegaire, and the announcement that Malik
Hluchoweckyj and Rasheed Worrell will transfer, Bowling Green will inevitably be young next season.
The Falcons have four players signed to the 2017 recruiting class in Derek Koch, a 6-foot-9 forward;
Joniya Gadson, a 6-10 forward; Daeqwon Powden, a 6-5 forward; and Nelly Cummings, a 6-0 point guard.
They have also picked up a verbal commitment from Matiss Kulackovskis, a 6-7 forward from Latvia, who
played at Archbishop Ryan in Philadelphia last season. It is not known when Kulackovskis will sign his
letter of intent.
“We’ve got eight guys out there that played minutes for us last year,” Huger said. “When you have that
coming back, and then you have five new guys coming in, everybody can teach everybody.
“Now you’ve got guys who can help each other. They all can grow together, they all can build it together.
“We’ll be young,” he added. “We’ll be much bigger than we were before. We’ll be more physical that we
were last year with the size that we have coming in. We’ll be more skilled then and hopefully we’ll be a
better shooting team.
“But we also need more post play. We had guys who were playing out of position. Now we can put guys back
in their right positions.”
Huger will have one scholarship available for the 2017-18 season. It will only be used for a transfer or
a graduate transfer, he said.
