MSU women preparing to take on familiar foe in Bowling Green

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For two weeks, the MSU women’s basketball team has dealt with the sour taste of its Big Ten Tournament loss to Iowa.

Now the Spartans are two wins away from being sweet again, and it all starts Saturday in the team’s first-round NCAA Tournament game against Bowling Green at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky.

MSU head coach Suzy Merchant, who coached at Eastern Michigan for nine seasons, is aware of the chip a Mid-American Conference team has on its shoulder when facing a Big Ten school.

“They are key games whether you’re playing them in November or March,” Merchant said. “Certainly they are ones that you definitely put on your list of things to accomplish, and (Bowling Green) is a program that has gone to a Sweet 16 and beat Vanderbilt, so they’ve beaten heavy hitters and high powers. I definitely anticipate a tough challenge in that first round.”

Tip-off is scheduled for 12:11 p.m.

These two teams are familiar with each other. Merchant coached against Bowling Green head coach Curt Miller for six seasons while at Eastern Michigan, and the two teams also met in the second round of the 2008 WNIT, a 74-66 MSU win.

“This time of the year you (usually) play against teams that aren’t really that used to you and not in your conference,” senior forward Aisha Jefferson said. “We got lucky. Knowing we’ve played them before is a little advantage. We don’t really have to go back too far from that game. They’re a good team, and we’re excited about it.”

MSU returns seven players and four starters who played in that WNIT. All four players who scored in double figures for MSU that day — Kalisha Keane, Allyssa DeHaan, Lauren Aitch and Mandy Piechowski — still are on the roster.

“You don’t have enough time for me to tell you about all the players that scare me over there,” Miller said. “Their top eight or nine players are very, very scary.”

Miller particularly is worried by DeHaan and Keane, the Big Ten’s Sixth Player of the Year. After the 2008 WNIT game between the two teams, Miller said he would’ve recruited Keane even if he was coaching at Connecticut.

“She’s just an amazing talent,” Miller said. “Offensively, she can do it all. She can pass, shoot, post — she’s just got the complete game. Defensively, she’s so smart and anticipates and really understands the game of basketball. I have the utmost respect for Kalisha.”

Miller, though, has a scary player of his own: two-time reigning MAC Player of the Year Lauren Prochaska, who averages 17.9 points per game and shoots 44.3 percent from the field, including 44.9 percent from 3-point range. By the time the junior forward’s career is done, she likely will be the program’s all-time leading scorer.

Prochaska’s supporting cast includes guard Tracy Pontius (11.6 ppg) and guard Tamika Nurse (10.7 ppg). Those three are Bowling Green’s top offensive threats and have taken almost 49 percent of the Falcons’ shots this season. They also helped lead the team to the MAC regular season and tournament championships.

“I’m not sure Michigan State’s going to let us do these kind of things, but we’re defined by the pick-and-roll,” Miller said.

“We try to pick-and-roll every single time down the floor at some point. We’re a big believer in that, so people have come to know nationally that that’s what we do. The biggest compliment for us is that the sum of our parts is greater than any individual player. We don’t have a lot of superstars, but we’re a tough out and we do a lot of team concepts and we play well together.”

One thing Bowling Green does well is shoot the 3-pointer. At times this season, the Spartans have struggled defending the triple, and the Falcons shoot a MAC-best 38.4 percent from behind the long line. Despite struggling in that area at times, MSU still has held its opponents to 29.2 percent from 3-point range, third best in the Big Ten.

“I know how they play,” Merchant said. “Their style hasn’t changed. They’ve got a great player in Lauren Prochaska and a lot of other players that go around her. You don’t get through the MAC the way they get through the MAC … and not be a very good basketball team.”

DeHaan’s recovery from back spasms will be crucial to MSU’s success. DeHaan said Monday her back was “on the up-and-up” and that she’ll be ready for the game, but time will tell how much of a factor she will be. Merchant said she expects DeHaan to be ready to go.

“It’s my last go at the NCAA Tournament in my senior year, so I’ll be ready,” DeHaan said.

If she’s on the floor, she creates a serious matchup issue for the Falcons, who don’t have a player taller than 6-foot-2 on the roster.

“She’s a huge challenge for us,” Prochaska said. “We don’t have a really tall post player on our team. We haven’t talked about how we’re going to defend her yet, but it’s definitely going to take a team effort to try to slow her down.”

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