When he took over the Bowling Green State University mens basketball program, first-year coach Todd Simon had his work cut out. He still has his work cut out.

At least now, after a 20-14 season and semifinal appearance in the Mid-American Conference tournament, he has something to sell.

“Winning certainly helps,” said Simon. “Last year at this time, the staff and I were held up in a rental while our families were away, just working 24 hours a day and just trying to sell the vision of Bowling Green basketball.

“When you are trying to sell something that maybe hasn’t happened yet, that’s difficult. Now, we’ve got something to say.

“We’re a successful program, we won 20 games, you can play in front of a lot of fans, so we have something now that is more tangible when the returns on that are already being seen.”

The Falcons secured a 20-win season after going 11-20 last year. Bowling Green is one of 10 teams in the nation to go from 20 losses last season to 20 wins this season.

The list includes Central Connecticut State, Little Rock, Loyola Chicago, McNeese, Ole Miss, SMU, South Carolina, Stony Brook and UT Arlington. The Falcons made the same flip from 2013-14 to 2014-15.

The Falcons’ 20 wins were one win away from tying the record for most wins by a first-year head coach in program history. This also marks the first 20-win season for BGSU since 2019-20 and just the ninth during the program’s MAC era.

Simon is the fourth coach in program history to win a MAC Tournament game in his first season with the Falcons as well.

Plus, he was just the third coach in program history to lead the Falcons to a postseason appearance in his first season at the helm of the Falcons. Bill Fitch made the NCAA Tournament in 1967-68 and Chris Jans made the CIT in 2014-15. With a first round win, Jans is the only coach in program history to win a postseason game in his first season.

Simon would rather credit his players, who fill a roster he had to nearly totally rebuild from last year with 10 new players through recruiting or the transfer portal.

“I’m really proud of this group,” said Simon. “Their character, their pride in BG, and what they did for our program won’t be forgotten.”

Fighting through injuries

To get through the season, he had to make some tough decisions, like not dressing 6-foot-8 senior forward Rashaun Agee, in Wednesday’s College Insider Tournament game against Purdue Fort Wayne at the Stroh Center.

Agee, a starter all season, still has eligibility remaining and Simon wants to keep him healthy.

“He’s been battling all year. After the tournament he was hurting bad, and he was kind of hurting leading up to the tournament, so we kind of felt like the responsible thing to do for him,” said Simon.

“You can make things worse with what he’s dealing with, so we said no, this isn’t the right time for that kind of fight. Obviously he was emotional and wanted to be out there with his guys.

“He’s got about three or four MRIs set up, so he’s got a long season of stuff just to make sure he’s (healthy). He’s going to be fine, but we want to make sure that we put health first with a lot of our guys.”

Plus, Agee wasn’t the only player fighting through bumps and bruises throughout the season.

“We lost some bodies for a significant amount of time,” said Simon. “I think we only had a few guys who played in every game, and some of those guys, like the Spurgins (brothers Greg and Jason) of the world and Rashaun Agee, God bless our trainer, Rob (Whitehurst), who is just kind of taping guys together.

“Guys are in there Saturday morning, Sunday morning, they are giving up a lot of their time in order to try to suit up. If you would have told me with what we were dealing with in practicing a lot of times with five guys against five coaches and not being able to do a lot of stuff that we would continue to get better,” Simon continued.

“I think that we did get better as the year went on and our competition got better as well. But we were right there. You lose a few overtime games, some coin-flip games, and we competed all year and you are just proud of that.

“Especially with our shooting woes and certainly with some of these things that we said, ‘Hey, you are going to do this, this, and this’ and say, ‘Uh-oh, this is going to be a tough year,’ but that was not the case with this group. They were going to find a way.”