Ohio will look to split its season-series with Bowling Green on Tuesday.
It’s been 43 days since Ohio and Bowling Green tussled near the Falcons’ bench in the closing minutes of Ohio’s first loss in the Convo this season, and the two teams couldn’t have followed more different paths since then.
Ohio (18-8, 9-5 MAC) has gone 8-3 since that day, including a current five-game win streak and a span of seven wins in its last eight contests.
Bowling Green (13-14, 4-10 MAC) has dropped seven in a row, and is just 2-9 since defeating Ohio.
The two respective teams will have a chance to either stay their current course or begin a new one on Tuesday, when Ohio heads to Bowling Green's Stroh Center for a 7 p.m. tip-off.
The Falcons’ dramatic fall in the MAC is something one would expect to see following an injury to a key player.
This hasn’t been the case, however, as Bowling Green has sent out the same starting five in all 27 of its games played this season.
The reality is that the Falcons were probably never all that good to begin with. It went 9-4 through a non-conference schedule that was fairly soft by MAC standards.
The counter to that argument is that Bowling Green was good enough to beat Ohio in January, but that matchup Jan. 12 included several outliers that the Bobcats simply haven’t allowed to occur since.
Bowling Green, while a decent 3-point shooting team at 37 percent for the season, hit 7-of-11 from deep against Ohio, a 64 percent mark the Falcons haven’t replicated in any other conference game.
"On the offensive glass, we got pummeled," Ohio coach Saul Phillips said after the loss. "We got crushed. That hasn't happened very often to us."
Then there was the Bobcats, in the midst of foul trouble that cursed them throughout the opening of MAC play. The Bobcats committed 30 fouls in the Convo against Bowling Green.
And despite one of its worst performances of the season, the Bobcats still managed to finish the loss with 75 points. That’s an important number, as it’s a point total that Bowling Green hasn’t reached in nearly a full month, last scoring it in a 79-78 win over Western Michigan on Jan. 26.
Coincidentally, that’s also the last time the Falcons won a game.
None of this is to say Bowling Green is incapable of polishing off a season sweep of Ohio at home on Tuesday.
In order to do it, however, they will need to shut down inarguably the hottest team in the conference, led by maybe the MAC’s best player.
That would be junior Antonio Campbell, the reigning MAC East Player of the Week who is averaging 26 points and 14 rebounds per game in his last four contests.
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"We have to keep winning games," Campbell said. "We go to (Bowling Green), a team that beat us earlier in the year. We let that one slip away from us early."
Ohio could also benefit from the return of forward Kenny Kaminski, who has sat out the past two games with a concussion, and hit three 3-pointers against Bowling Green in January. Phillips said Saturday that he is “very optimistic” about Kaminski’s prospects for playing Tuesday.
aw987712@ohio.edu
@_TonyWolfe_
