KENT — Across the schools’ two regular-season meetings and the final three quarters on Monday night,
Bowling Green’s women had a three-point advantage over Kent State for the year.
The Falcons’ fight reflected what Robyn Fralick has come to expect from her underclassmen-laden team this
season.
But BG opened the game with one of its worst quarters of the season and could not piece together enough
stops in ending its season with an 86-62 loss to the Golden Flashes in the Mid-American Conference
tournament opener at the M.A.C. Center in Kent.
“The first quarter was a really horrible start and its hard to kind of crawl your way out of that,”
Fralick said. “You can’t start like that. We were bad on both ends.”
BG — which ends its season at 9-21 — converted just 2 of 12 field goals, committed six turnovers and
conceded 13 rebounds for a 25-7 deficit through 10 minutes.
Kent State (19-11) will play four-seed Buffalo on Wednesday in the quarterfinals at Quicken Loans Arena
in Cleveland.
The Golden Flashes, who have an array of explosive guards at their disposal, racked up 14 points in the
paint in the first quarter. Fralick credited her team’s ability to stay in front of those guards as a
reason for BG’s 62-49 win over KSU 10 days ago on March 2. The Flashes totaled just 24 points in the
paint in that loss.
“Some of that was off of turnovers, it’s hard to get your defense set off turnovers and we weren’t
scoring at all so you’re kind of always scrambling,” Fralick said of Monday’s paint scoring.
“We got our defense set more. We took better care of the ball,” she added in reference to the March 2
game.
“We started (tonight’s) game with four turnovers.”
Asiah Dingle paced KSU with 25 points, repeatedly knifing through the Falcon defense. She shot 7 of 13
from the field and connected on 11 of 14 foul shots. She also led with six assists and five other KSU
players scored at least nine points.
Andrea Cecil, who tallied her seventh double-double of the season, was scoreless at halftime. The
6-foot-1 junior wing got herself and the team rolling in the second half.
Following senior Maddie Cole’s layup, Cecil hit a pair of free throws to cut the deficit to 47-26. Her
layup with 2:29 left in the third quarter cut the deficit to 17. She scored 10 points in the quarter and
finished with a team-high 17 points and 11 rebounds.
Morgan McMillen followed Cecil’s layup by splitting a pair of foul shots to bring BG within 58-42 while
generating some momentum.
“Every night I believed we would fight. We didn’t always get the outcome we wanted, but I never doubted
that we would fight back,” Fralick said. “Our team’s shown that all year. … But the beginning was, you
can’t get down that much.”
McMillen scored 15 and knocked down a pair of 3-pointers for 89 on the season. Her total ended three
short of Lauren Prochaska’s school-record of 92.
Cole scored 10, her third time in double-figures this season. Fellow senior Sydney Lambert scored six
with four assists.
“Syd Lambert’s an elite competitor. I love her fight, you can count on her night-in and night-out to
battle,” Fralick said of her senior. “And then Maddie Cole I think has been a great example of, it’s
never too late to get better. She didn’t play much her first three years and this year we really counted
on her and she stepped up.”
Kadie Hempfling, held without an assist for the first time all season, finishes three assists behind Kate
Achter’s freshman school-record of 124 assists in a season. Achter (688 assists) has the career assist
record at BG.
BG entered the MAC tournament with a 2-16 conference record and had not won a MAC game on the road. It
ends the season with three straight losses, but brings back 13 of 15 players.
“The reality is, we have a lot of work to do and we have to get a lot better and we have to have a great
offseason,” Fralick said.