Great crowd and great atmosphere. BG plays Columbia, the Ivy League regular season champion, probably on Wednesday and hopefully at BG again. Columbia beat Syracuse and Harvard in their last two games.

Nyla Hampton did not play, Alyssa Brett wore a mask and did not shoot well on her threes. BG was down 6 late in the second period but Kadie Hempling hit two threes in the last minute. In the third quarter Amy Valasco scored 15 points and Brett got going and the game turned into a route. Velasco and Hempling are not regular starters, but they are both good enough to be starters.

It would be interesting to know how many times an Ivy League school has visited a MAC school in any sport. I'm guessing this is pretty unusual. Even in men's ice hockey -- where there are only about 63 Division I programs and more than half the Ivy League participates -- I can't think of a time where an Ivy League program visited Bowling Green. (Maybe it happened in the late 1970s or something, but nothing comes to mind.)

I'm definitely looking forward to having Columbia play at Bowling Green. Hopefully we can pack the Stroh Center again.

(03-28-2023 08:54 AM)DICK Wrote:  Great crowd and great atmosphere. BG plays Columbia, the Ivy League regular season champion, probably on Wednesday and hopefully at BG again. Columbia beat Syracuse and Harvard in their last two games.

Nyla Hampton did not play, Alyssa Brett wore a mask and did not shoot well on her threes. BG was down 6 late in the second period but Kadie Hempling hit two threes in the last minute. In the third quarter Amy Valasco scored 15 points and Brett got going and the game turned into a route. Velasco and Hempling are not regular starters, but they are both good enough to be starters.

BG has shown incredible resilience. Prior to the season, they lost Kenzie Lewis, who stepped away from basketball for mental health reasons. Hempfling, already on the heavy side, gained weight in the offseason to the extent that her immobility is a significant enough problem to limit her minutes, despite her skills. Starter Morgan Sharps went down in January with a knee injury. Nyla Hampton has missed the last two games with a sprained ankle. Brett, as mentioned, is wearing a face mask and shot badly last night. It's amazing and a credit to the team that they are still standing in the NIT. There is much speculation that their coach will be at Michigan State next year, which would be a shame for the MAC if it happened.

Between Toledo's NCAA win and BG's NIT run, the post-season has been great for the MAC.

(03-28-2023 09:30 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  It would be interesting to know how many times an Ivy League school has visited a MAC school in any sport. I'm guessing this is pretty unusual. Even in men's ice hockey -- where there are only about 63 Division I programs and more than half the Ivy League participates -- I can't think of a time where an Ivy League program visited Bowling Green. (Maybe it happened in the late 1970s or something, but nothing comes to mind.)

I'm definitely looking forward to having Columbia play at Bowling Green. Hopefully we can pack the Stroh Center again.

BG hosted Princeton, January 4-5, 2002, splitting the series.

(03-28-2023 01:39 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(03-28-2023 09:30 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  It would be interesting to know how many times an Ivy League school has visited a MAC school in any sport. I'm guessing this is pretty unusual. Even in men's ice hockey -- where there are only about 63 Division I programs and more than half the Ivy League participates -- I can't think of a time where an Ivy League program visited Bowling Green. (Maybe it happened in the late 1970s or something, but nothing comes to mind.)

I'm definitely looking forward to having Columbia play at Bowling Green. Hopefully we can pack the Stroh Center again.

BG hosted Princeton, January 4-5, 2002, splitting the series.

UT WBB has hosted Brown and Dartmouth.

UT MBB has hosted Ivies a number of times, but mostly in the 30s-40s. Since Savage was built, they've hosted Columbia, Cornell x2, Penn, Princeton & Yale x2

(03-28-2023 09:30 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  I'm definitely looking forward to having Columbia play at Bowling Green. Hopefully we can pack the Stroh Center again.

Word is the Falcons are on track for a sellout.

It's officially a SELL OUT!!

(03-28-2023 04:27 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  It's officially a SELL OUT!!

And it took less than 24 hours. Pretty amazing.

This has been quite a run.

What an incredible run for BG women. They have stood tall and kept up the momentum of winning. Congrats on the sellout. What an environment it will be for the home team!

(03-28-2023 09:30 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  It would be interesting to know how many times an Ivy League school has visited a MAC school in any sport. I'm guessing this is pretty unusual. Even in men's ice hockey -- where there are only about 63 Division I programs and more than half the Ivy League participates -- I can't think of a time where an Ivy League program visited Bowling Green. (Maybe it happened in the late 1970s or something, but nothing comes to mind.)

I'm definitely looking forward to having Columbia play at Bowling Green. Hopefully we can pack the Stroh Center again.

WMU has hosted Cornell a couple times in the late 90s and 00s. I remember Dartmouth when I was a student at WMU as well.

By the way, Washington and Kansas is the other semifinal.

Not too much a surprise here...

(03-29-2023 09:37 AM)Motown Bronco Wrote:  Not too much a surprise here...

Yeah...duh.

The position has been open for over two weeks now. So the top candidate is either Robyn or one of the other coaches of the teams still playing...and those coaches likely aren't going anywhere...especially with Robyn being from Okemos.

Earlier reports said MSU was trying to hire at a smaller salary than the 700k+ Merchant was making. That might be the only shot BG has of keeping her...but she's making like 250k now, so the most BG might be able to get to would be something at or a little over 300k. They don't have the donor funds for the women's program like the men's program has.

The Bowling Green women lost in the WNIT semis to Columbia, 77-70. It was a heck of a run, nevertheless.

Nice run. Came down with COVID yesterday after taking my daughter to the ER on Saturday. She also came down with COVID yesterday, but is OK. Went searching for the game but it was over and saw the score. Very nice run.

BGSU officially lost their coach to Michigan St.

Tough, but there isn't a single successful MAC coach in any sport that doesn't leave for the money.

(03-31-2023 10:35 PM)epasnoopy Wrote:  BGSU officially lost their coach to Michigan St.

Tough, but there isn't a single successful MAC coach in any sport that doesn't leave for the money.

Early reports are that Fralick will make around 900k per year on a 6-year contract.

No. Brainer.

Bowling Green's new head coach will be Fred Chmiel, an assistant at South Carolina the past eight years.

That seems like one heck of a resume.

Miami’s leading scorer and 3rd team All MAC point guard Ivy Wolf has entered the transfer portal and quickly committed to Dayton. There is deep discontent among the fan base and evidently some team members that Miami continues to go with a coaching staff that in 4 years has won just 30% of their games. Evidently don’t want to spend the money to buy out Coach Hendrix who has one year left on her contract. In 4 years the team has never finished in the top 8 despite having one or two all MAC players every year.

(04-10-2023 09:08 AM)DICK Wrote:  Miami’s leading scorer and 3rd team All MAC point guard Ivy Wolf has entered the transfer portal and quickly committed to Dayton. There is deep discontent among the fan base and evidently some team members that Miami continues to go with a coaching staff that in 4 years has won just 30% of their games. Evidently don’t want to spend the money to buy out Coach Hendrix who has one year left on her contract. In 4 years the team has never finished in the top 8 despite having one or two all MAC players every year.

We have some chronically underperforming teams in the MAC that have been unwilling to change directions: Miami, Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan. Akron has been better than all of those teams and fired its coach.