Sam Towns slams home a dunk in Bowling Green’s 76-68 dismantling of Toledo at the Stroh Center Friday. (Lee Welch|Sentinel-Tribune)
By Nicholas Huenefeld
Special to the Sentinel-Tribune
The Bowling Green State University mens basketball team outscored Toledo 23-8 off turnovers while Marcus Hill poured in a game-high 31 points in a 76-68 upset of Toledo inside the Stroh Center on Friday night.
With the victory, Toledo had its five-game winning streak against BGSU snapped one shy of becoming the longest in series history, and it was the first victory at home for the Falcons in the series since Feb. 8, 2020.
BGSU, which entered the game having lost four of the past six, snapped a three-game losing streak. They sit alone in fifth place in the MAC. Toledo (17-10, 11-3), which entered Friday having won three of their past four, dropped out of a first-place tie with Akron (12-2).
“This group has doubled down after every adversity,” BGSU coach Todd Simon said. “The next practice has always been better than the last one.
“They come back, and they get closer together, they double down, and they do it again. And they just say, ‘I’ve seen this enough.’
“Basketball rewards you at some point for being great teammates and holding each other accountable and practicing the way (they do). Today was a little bit of culmination of that.”
Hill finished 11-of-24 from the field, including 9-of-11 from the charity stripe, along with six rebounds and a pair of steals for BGSU (17-10, 8-6 MAC). He led a potent offensive attack that included double-digit points from Da’Shawn Phillip (11), Trey Thomas (10) and Rashaun Agee, who secured the game’s lone double-double with 10 points and 11 rebounds.
Thomas and Phillip made two of the biggest plays of the game.
With 12:17 remaining in the game, Toledo’s Dante Maddox started a fast break looking to trim his team’s five-point deficit, but Thomas knocked the ball away. Hill converted a layup on the other end, spurring a 6-0 run that gave the Falcons their first of two 11-point leads.
After the Rockets cut their deficit to five twice down the stretch, Phillip made a dagger 3-pointer from the left wing with three seconds left on the shot clock to give the Falcons an eight-point lead with 3:33 left. From there, BGSU never trailed by fewer than six.
“Coach harps a lot on getting back in transition drills and talking and communicating with each other in transition,” Hill said. “I feel like every time we needed a transition stop, we got it because we took pride in communicating to each other.”
BGSU scored the game’s first four points and led 11-6 just over four minutes in. The Rockets responded, taking their first lead with 11:36 remaining and ultimately took their largest lead, 33-27, with just over four minutes left in the half.
The Falcons, however, closed the half on a 12-5 run with Phillip securing a second chance layup just before the buzzer to give the home team a 39-38 lead.
“We answered the bell at every turn,” Simon said. “(We knew) they were going to come out (of the locker room) with a champion’s mentality. They’ve got three straight (regular season championships). They weren’t going to roll over.
“We knew there was going to be another heavyweight fight in them that second half. We showed leaps in in our mentality to be able to string together a full 40 minutes without any lapses.”
Over a 13-minute stretch encompassing the first and second halves after Toledo took a six-point lead, BGSU went on a 29-12 run, capped by a throw-down from Jason Spurgin, for their first of two 11-point leads with 10:46 remaining. Later, a layup from Hill gave the team a 62-51 lead with 7:33 left.
“The story of the game in in my eyes was just our turnovers to start the second half, not trusting each other,” Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk said. “We got away from ourselves, from doing what we do, and that’s sharing the ball. Those turnovers led to some transition for them, and they had a run to start the second half.”
Ra’Heim Moss led Toledo with 19 points while Tyler Cochran and Maddox added 17 and 15, respectively.
