Akron 65 Bowling Green 56

Men's Basketball
Home Team: BGSU Falcons
Visiting Team: Akron Zips
Venue: Anderson Arena (Bowling Green, Ohio)
Game Time: 2:00 p.m.
Fellow Attendees: None

First, the good news: the first time these two teams played this season, BG lost by 36. This time around, they were able to cut the deficit to 9.

Now, the bad news: this is a game the Falcons had no business losing at all. Don't get me wrong, Akron's a good team, but right now they're wounded, they were on our home floor, and they were ripe for the taking. BG had a lead with less than 3:00 remaining, and just couldn't seal the deal.

As has often been the case in Falcon losses this year, this was a game of missed opportunities. Too many turnovers, too many failures to make a play at times when one play might have been enough to carry them over the hump. Most of all, too many missed free throws. 50% as a team? That's just unacceptable. Making just three or four more of those would have been enough to make this a totally different game.

I have to say again that the "spread out the floor and let Nate Miller drive to the hoop" offense is not the way to go. It has worked for us at times, no doubt, but at some point in the season you have to assume the other team has seen some tape and is ready for it. That was surely the case in this game. The Falcons went into this particular offensive mode coming out of halftime, and the results were brutal. They managed to score just one point before the first media timeout. And I'm not saying that to dog Nate by any means--the dude's a warrior, our team MVP by far, and probably my favorite player on this team. When the entire defense knows where he's going, though, he's not going to be effective. Akron used that particular drought to push their lead out to ten points, and I thought the game was pretty much over at that point.

Give the guys a ton of credit, though--they battled back to tie the game and then take the lead before losing it again in the waning minutes. Another capable body on the bench might have helped, too--just when BG tied the game, Darryl Clements and Marc Larson came into the game. I know the guys on the floor, who had been scrapping so hard, probably needed a break, but that was a curious move to me. Darryl has been scoring more of late, but neither of those guys was exactly an offensive asset in this game, and with the lineup on the floor working so well (Jakubowski, Moten, Miller, Knight, Polk), I personally would have stuck with it at least a little bit longer.

Now, if I may, I'd like to go off on a bit of a bit of a rant that's only tangentially connected to the game. Lean in close, if you would, and I'll whisper a bit of BGSU blasphemy into your ear.

There's a long-standing campus organization known as SICSIC that is ostensibly a spirit squad. They dress in masks and jumpsuits anytime they're in public, they post various signs all over campus, and they come to games to throw candy and harass and irritate the fans. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but I don't know what it is. There are six members, two each from the sophomore, junior, and senior classes at BG. No one outside the organization is supposed to know who the members are until late in each basketball season, when the two senior members are "beheaded" (i.e. unmasked) at halftime of a game.

Now, here's the blasphemy: I hate SICSIC. The point of the organization is to generate school spirit, and from what I can see, they do a pretty terrible job. The less-than-stellar student attendance at basketball games is one demonstration of that. They do increase attendance on beheading day, at least, when their family and friends (mostly fellow members of their fraternities or sororities--you'll pardon me, of course, if I don't refer to them as "brothers" or "sisters"--I'll save my rant on the Greek system for another day) show up to see them unmasked. However, the people who show up for this event do nothing to improve the game atmosphere; the only clog up the bleachers and express their lack of interest in and knowledge of the game itself (I generally end up, somehow, sitting in the middle of a group of them; this year, thankfully, I did not). Only for the first half, though--they invariably exit en masse after the halftime festivities. And that, to me, underlines the futility of SICSIC as a group--if you can't get your own posse to stick around and show enthusiasm for one full game they're coming to anyway, then you're obviously not fulfilling your stated intention of promoting school spirit.

And it'll be a similar story next time out, the Falcons' last home game of the year, when the mascots, Freddie and Frieda, are likewise beheaded. I'll be irritated with the people who show up solely for that as well, but you won't hear me railing against the birds. For one thing, they came to my wedding. For another, they actually contribute to the game atmosphere, getting people into it in various ways (trying, at least), whereas SICSIC is just annoying.

At any rate, as I just mentioned, there's just one home game left for the Falcons, and it'll be a toughie--MAC leader Kent State on March 1.