CLEVELAND — It was a tale of two halves for Bowling Green in Friday’s semifinal.
The Falcons trailed by six in the game’s first two minutes, but responded with a tantalizing run to carry
a 23-point lead into halftime.
The game was still undecided in the final minute.
BG, which rarely missed in the first half, watched its significant lead turn to zero twice in the final
five minutes of the second half.
But when a play needed to be made, the Falcons made one and connected on 6 of 8 foul shots down the
stretch to hold off seven-seeded Northern Illinois for a 71-67 MAC tournament semifinal win at Quicken
Loans Arena.
“I didn’t have a thought like we would lose the game or anything like that, I just thought we’ve got to
get the right stops in and we’ve got to be able to score in transition,” BG head coach Michael Huger
said. “Those are the two things that happened and that changed the whole game.”
BG, which improved to 22-11, clinches an appearance in the MAC title game for the first time since 2002 —
and just the fourth time in program history. The Falcons will play top-seeded and nationally-ranked
Buffalo in a rubber-match tonight at 7:30 for a league crown.
Bowling Green, picked to finish last in the conference from preseason voting, is one of just three teams
to beat the 30-win Bulls this season with a 92-88 decision on Feb. 1.
NIU, which had four in a row including an upset over two-seed Toledo on Thursday, ends its season at
17-17.
For the Falcons, Dylan Frye found another much-needed rhythm for the second consecutive night.
After BG trailed 7-1 in the opening minutes, Frye curled left from the right wing before burying a
step-back 3-pointer. The junior capped what became a 19-4 run — and a 20-11 lead — with a kickout from
Justin Turner to the right corner for another one of his game-high four 3s.
“You have to give Bowling Green a lot of credit. Incredible first half. I thought their defense was
stifling,” NIU coach Mark Montgomery said. “Frye came out making shots, (Demajeo) Wiggins played big
and, you know, we had to regroup at halftime.”
Frye scored 15 of his season-high 25 points in the second half and stopped an NIU run by hitting nothing
but nylon on a shockingly-deep 3-pointer from the left wing to push BG’s lead back to 10, 55-45. Frye
also scored 25 in BG’s win over Buffalo last month.
Turner scored 14, Daeqwon Plowden added 12 — all in the first half — and Wiggins had eight points for BG.
The Huskies, led by Eugene German’s game-high 31 points, eventually wiped BG’s lead away altogether.
The first moment, which marked the first time NIU had not trailed since a 9-9 score just 4:35 into the
game, came when 6-foot-8 forward — shooting 26.9 percent from deep on the season — stepped into a triple
from the left wing to even the score at 56-56 with 5:13 to play.
Levi Bradley’s stutter-step pull-up jumper just inside the arc with 3:28 left the score deadlocked at
58-58.
“The biggest thing is we didn’t quit, we didn’t hang our heads. In years past that may have been the case
and we may have lost this game,” Huger said. “But we were able to stick together and eventually the
shots were able to drop and we were able to get the stops that we needed.”
BG answered with a 7-0 run.
Frye hit a pair of free throws before Turner capitalized on a throw-away from NIU by sinking a floater in
the middle of the lane. The duo combined to seal the run, when Turner took a steal the length of the
floor before kicking out to the left corner for another 3, a 65-58 lead, and an NIU timeout.
“It just shows that we can respond in any situation,” Turner said. “We let it slip, so our mindset going
into that situation is we’ve got to do whatever it takes to get a stop and that’s what we did.”
Frye and Turner combined to shoot 6 of 8 on foul shots in the final two minutes, including five straight
makes from Frye to punch their ticket for today’s championship.
German shot 12 of 18 from the field; the rest of NIU shot 14 of 36. Bradley scored 16.
