| BG’s Tracy Pontius handles the ball. |
ATHENS — It was far from a perfect performance.
Still Bowling Green’s women had enough to down Ohio, 66-54, in the Mid-American Conference season-opener
Wednesday.
“As the hunted and as a favorite and coming off another good non-conference we are going to see the best
effort from everybody and we did tonight,” BG coach Curt Miller said. “We had an OU team that played
very hard, very physical and very confidently.
“With that said, I’m happy we got a road win. You have to do that in this conference if you are going to
make a run at a regular-season championship,” Miller continued. “We didn’t play great basketball, but we
gutted it out … We did enough to win the game, but we must get better.”
Some of the areas that concern Miller are rebounding and some of the intangibles of the game. Ohio held a
36-31 rebounding edge with 15 offensive rebounds.
“The lack of offense in stretches by certain players affected how they played at the defensive end,”
Miller said. “A mistake at one end or the other, they carried it on to another possession. We’re a
veteran group and we should be beyond that.
“I was disappointed that we didn’t play with an air of confidence, an air of that I can affect the team
in a variety of ways, even if I am not scoring or even if I make a defensive mistake,” Miller added.
Ohio took the early lead, but a jumper from Maggie Hennegan with 8:12 to play in the first half put the
Falcons ahead to stay. BG led by as many as eight points in the first half and held a 28-24 lead at the
break.
Hennegan, who finished with 16 points, her best performance as a Falcon, scored eight points in the
opening half as BG found some openings in Ohio’s zone and took advantage of the opportunities.
“Ohio really spread out their zone. You could tell they were really worried about our shooters and our
outside threats, so that opened up the middle a lot,” Hennegan said. “We actually want to execute that
better and work on things so the offense is balanced.”
The other key to the first half was the defensive effort of BG’s Lauren Prochaska on Tenishia Benson,
Ohio’s leading scorer. Benson was 3-of-11 from the field with six points in the opening half.
| BG’s Lauren Prochaska (2) handles the ball with teammate Maggie Hennegan and Ohios’ Tenishia Benson close behind. |
Bowling Green pulled away from Ohio in the second half, building a 13-point lead, 50-37, on a Jen Uhl
3-pointer with 11:37 left in the game.
The Bobcats made a 12-7 run over the next seven minutes to cut BG’s lead to eight, 57-49, with 4:24
remaining.
After Tracy Pontius split a pair of free throws for the Falcons and Ohio turned the ball over, Prochaska
nailed a 3-pointer and the officials ruled the basket good and called a foul on Ohio. Hennegan made both
free throws on the foul to push BG’s lead back to 14 points, 63-49, with 3:10 left.
Ohio twice cut the lead back to 12 points, the final time on a 3-pointer by Erin Bailes with 27 seconds
left, but the Falcons were able to hang on.
“We know that conference is a whole new ballgame,” Hennegan said. “We just have to come out ready … Teams
come out really strong against us.
“Ohio played tough, we’re just going to have to play tougher than teams the whole year,” she added.
Prochaska missed her first 3-pointer of the game and had the second attempt blocked, but found her range
in the second half scoring 17 of her game-high 23 points in the final 20 minutes.
Hennegan was the only other Falcon in double figures. She had scored in double figures in three of the
first four games of the season, but her last double-digit effort, before Wednesday, was Nov. 20 against
Oakland.
“Maggie did a good job when we got her the ball in areas where she could be effective in the zone,”
Miller said. “She got out in transition and got a couple of baskets. That’s always important, free
points in transition.”
Uhl finished with eight points and a team-high nine rebounds and Pontius had eight points, four steals,
four assists and five rebounds with only two turnovers.
Benson finished with a team-high 13 points, but she was hurt by foul trouble in the second half.
“She got away from us a few times in the first half,” Miller said about Benson. “We made most of her
shots difficult. We made her take a lot of shots to get her productivity, so her shooting percentages
were low and that goes a lot to Lauren.
“We made her shot a low percentage (5-of-15) and a lot of that credit goes to team defense, but certainly
Lauren (was a factor).”
NOTES: BG is now 13-1 overall, having won 13 straight games … The school record for consecutive wins is
25 set by the 2008-09 team … Ohio is 4-10 … Both Prochaska and Hennegan were 6-of-6 from the free-throw
line … BG hosts Miami Saturday with tipoff at 2 p.m.
