The Bowling Green Christian Academy boys basketball team is riding a six-game win streak, improving to 16-3 on the season and controls its own destiny for a league championship.

The Lions have four regular season games remaining, including three Independent Christian Schools of Ohio contests, and if the Lions win all three they can finish 9-1 in the ICSO West Division.

The reason for BG Christian’s success comes down to five starters who all returned from a 17-10 season last year (6-3 ICSO West).

“Our season is going pretty good so far,” said senior guard Will Brose. “It’s just the chemistry and the group of guys that we have.

“We had all these guys basically last year, so now this year we have all our guys back together. That bond is just inseparable with all of us together.”

BG Christian’s latest win came on Monday against Northwest Ohio Classical Academy (Toledo), 76-53, at Bowling Green Community Center’s Delores Black Gymnasium, the Lions’ home court.

Brose hit four three-point goals, scoring a game-high 24 points with seven rebounds and two steals as the Lions shot 43% from the field, doubled the Spartans up in rebounds (45-22) and knocked down eight triples as a team.

“As you see tonight they execute when they get their chances. We shot really well tonight,” BG Christian coach Rob Boron said.

Titus Angel, a 6-foot-5 senior, had 13 points and six rebounds, senior Caleb Kunstmann had 11 points and two steals, and senior John Fyfe scored eight points.

BG Christian senior Hudson Thomas had six points, nine rebounds and three steals, senior Brent Boston had six points, five rebounds and four steals, and senior Jaydin Pinkney had six points and three steals.

The last two wins before taking on Northwest Ohio Classical were over Toledo Jones Leadership Academy, 67-38, and Toledo Horizon Science, 63-36, both non-league games. Their schedule not only includes smaller Christian schools, but some smaller public and charter schools and OHSAA member schools (like Lima Temple Christian).

For the Lions, they not only are seeking to win the ICSO West Division, but take the ICSO state championship in the postseason tournament. Last year’s team lost in the state quarterfinals to eventual state champion Kingsway Christian.

“For us, it is to win the whole thing,” Brose said. “That’s what our goal has been from the beginning of the year.

“We set five goals, three of them we’ve accomplished and we still want to get two — on February 15 we play Stateline (Christian) and two, to win the whole thing — that is our goal.”

Stateline Christine, located in Temperance, Michigan, has been a thorn in BG Christian’s side and typically has a perennially strong program competing in Michigan’s Christian-school state association, so they provide solid non-league competition for the Lions.

Other goals the team has met including winning at least 15 games and averaging over 50 points per game, which they have met. The most wins at the school ever are 18, so that is now within reach, and the team is averaging 53 points per game, even scoring 90 in one game earlier this season.

“It’s been more than what they even had hoped for,” Boron said. “I think that is really a testament to their hard work and I just sort of get them in position to be successful.”

Two-year rebuilding program

Boron said this is a team that has been building for the last two years.

“We feel really good about the season. We came into last year, and as we finished up last season, we talked about this year being a two-year process, from what we were hoping to do last year to building into this year,” Boron said.

“So, this is kind of the culmination of what we have been building towards for the last year and a half. We had a team meeting and talked about some of our goals for this season and the guys have high expectations which matched what I was anticipating we would have.”

Senior Max Cobb, who had two points and six rebounds on Monday, adds to the veteran experience who returned to BG Christian this year. Having eight seniors makes Boron’s job easier.

“There are a lot of extensions of the coaching staff on the floor right, so the team has talked a lot about having value and having players on the court who already know what to do before I need to call a timeout or make a substitution to tell a guy something,” Boron said.

“So we have a lot of guys who communicate really well on the court and off the court and that plays into our strength and put us in a lot of positive situations and as games go and they are flowing guys are able to make changes on the fly and communicate those changes to the team.”

While 53 points per game falls in line with what many high school teams average today, it wasn’t even that last year.

“Offensively last year we scored 41 points per game and we were only giving up 43, 44 points per game,” Boron said.

“We had a couple games where we held teams to 40 or less and still ended up losing a couple of those, so really what the guys ended up working on a lot in the offseason was cleaning up their catch and shoot game.

“From a coaching standpoint, my assistant coach (Josh Crawford) and I revamped the way we are attacking on offense to put those guys in better positions to get the ball in spots where they are best suited to score.

“Last year we were still trying to feel a lot of stuff out because all five of our guys were starters for the first time. Now we have five starters returning all the other guys have just gotten better as well.”

Brose and Boston both earned all-league honors a year ago, but Boron says he could see even more players getting accolades this year.

“Will is a hard worker and he is probably one of our more consistent offensive threats and he ‘s kind of stayed and continued to get better from where he was last year,” Boron said.

“Hudson Thomas was another one who last year was a really good defender for us and as the season got toward the end he started becoming a more offensive piece, so he’s taken that next step forward.

“We have guys like Ben Boston and Caleb Kunstmann who ran our offense really well and they’ve been working really hard to do that even more competently this year, and now they work on playing more to their own strengths the best that we can.”

Angel, however, is a transfer, so bringing his size to the team filled a badly needed gap.

“When you add a guy who is 6-5 to your team when we didn’t have any height quite to that level last year, it kind of reminds me of two years ago when we had a couple guys in that height range,” Boron said.

“He’s giving us some extra defensive intensity at the rim that we sometimes lacked, especially last year when we had one of our taller players break his ankle and miss the second half o the season last year.

“Having Titus as another guy who we can put to help protect the basket and help us secure more rebounds, whether it be from strong box outs or going to the ball, and then just challenging teams as they get to the rim.”