Bowling Green happy to be 'hunter' vs. Spartans

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Bowling Green women’s basketball head coach Curt Miller is breathing a sigh of relief now that his team is out of Mid-American Conference, or MAC, play.

When his team plays No. 5-seed MSU at 12:11 p.m. Saturday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, it’ll be the first time in three months that his team, the MAC regular season and tournament champion, isn’t the hunted.

“The biggest thing for us right now is that the bulls-eye is not on our back,” said Miller, who won the MAC Coach of the Year award from 2005-09. “The pressure is not as great as it is each and every night in our conference when we’re hunted. Even in the (preseason) WNIT, we felt a little pressure out of the gates, even though we were clearly the underdogs because we wanted to set the tone for the year. This is all gravy for us now, so for the first time in a long time, we can play as an underdog. We can play carefree.”

Bowling Green, the No. 12-seed in the Kansas City regional, will meet a tough challenge in MSU.

Playing in what likely was a one-bid league put pressure on the Falcons if they wanted to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since advancing to the Sweet 16 in 2007.

That season, Bowling Green beat Oklahoma State and Vanderbilt in East Lansing before its Cinderella run was ended by Arizona State.

The Falcons (27-6 overall) have qualified for the WNIT the past two seasons and were bounced from the tournament in 2008 by the Spartans, a 74-66 loss in East Lansing.

“The familiarity of that game will help both teams and the players involved,” Miller said. “I think it was a tale of two games. We got down by as many as 16-18 and could’ve finished the game getting blown out by 20 or 30. You can teach your team that, but you also can teach your team that we were gutty, and you can find ways to get back in it. We got all the way back down to four late in the game and just ran out of gas.”

In that game, MSU outscored Bowling Green 40-10 in the paint and hammered them on the boards, 47-32. That WNIT game is part of six straight postseason appearances for the Falcons, including four NCAA Tournament outings.

“Curt Miller’s done a fabulous job at Bowling Green,” MSU head coach Suzy Merchant said. “Obviously coming from the MAC, I know him very well, and we’ve had some good battles. They’re very tough to guard, have shooters everywhere, play you outside-in instead of inside-out and having some changing defensive looks. It’s going to be a battle, there’s no question.”

This season, the Falcons won their sixth straight MAC regular season title and rolled to the MAC Tournament championship, winning three games by an average of nearly 25 points per game. Forward Lauren Prochaska, the two-time reigning MAC Player of the Year, said her team is an “exciting, uptempo team.”

“We like to get the score up and run as much as we can and keep the game uptempo,” she said. “We shoot a lot of outside shots, but we have great post play as well. We’re pretty balanced inside and out.”

Prochaska, who scored a then-career-high 24 points against the Spartans in the 2008 WNIT game, is a prolific scorer who holds the school record for points in a game (43 against Central Michigan last season). She is the team’s offensive leader, averaging 17.9 points per game and has been rolling as of late. She scored a season-high 29 points in the MAC Championship game against Toledo en route to earning MAC Tournament MVP honors after averaging 20.3 points per game. She’s scored in double figures in 30 of 33 games this season.

Outside of MAC play, the Falcons were tested, playing five teams that made the NCAA Tournament, including Ohio State and Vanderbilt.

Prochaska said her team learned from that Ohio State game, a 91-72 loss in the Preseason WNIT.

“We let that game get away from us early,” Prochaska said. “We just have to come out sharp from the beginning and play hard and do the best we can right from the start.”

Miller said one of his team’s key strengths is that the sum of its parts is greater than any one individual. That team-first attitude has permeated through his team.

“We have to do what we’ve done all year: Stick together and play together,” Prochaska said. “No one can win this game individually, but together as a team, we have a chance.”

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