Bowling Green Falcons vs. Wright State Raiders men's basketball final: Falcons never get going offensively in 83-47 loss

The Bowling Green Falcons came out and scored the game's first 5 points. Everything after was pretty much bad Wright State wiped the floor with the visiting Falcons from that point forward in a 83-47 win. It's hard saying whether BG wants to forget this one or use it as motivation.

Wright State torched the nets to start the second half. Specifically it was JT Yoho who had the Falcons' number. The senior, who came in leading the team at 10.8 ppg, finished with 22 points and 4 3-pointers. It was a quick spurt of 8 points from Yoho in the opening minutes of the second half that helped to quickly widen the gap between the Falcons and Raiders.

The Raiders went from up 35-27 at half to leading 48-31 less than five minutes into the second half. In all, the Raiders only missed 5 shots in the game's final 20 minutes of play, going 16 of 21 from the field as even the scrubs got into the action much to the Nutter Center crowd's delight. The Falcons made just 5 second-half shots and finished shooting 27.5 percent for the day.

Mark Alstork was right behind Yoho in terms of second half play. The sophomore guard from Dayton scored 19. Joe Thomasson (who scored WSU's first 7 points of the game) and Grant Benzinger both finished in double digits.

The Falcons came in averaging 13.8 assists per game and concluded the day with 6. That should say about all that needs said about the poor ball movement from BG. By comparison, WSU had 19.

But a bit more can be said.

The Falcons were stifled from getting clean looks around the bucket. Time and again the Falcons were met with two defenders at the top of the key whose responsibility was to keep the Falcons' guards out of the paint. Because of this, the dribble-drive was rendered ineffective, and it eliminated BG's ability to hit kick out 3-pointers to the wing and the corners. A lack of ball movement to start possessions contributed to this as well.

'Our guys, they switched. We threw it in to Yoho, he made great decisions," said Wright State coach Billy Donlon. Our guards drove the perimeter, when they tried to post Spencer Parker, our guys did a really good job of denying it, making it hard to get in there and then we guarded the dribble."

Ismail Ali, who came in averaging 5.8 points per game, had 9 at the half on three buckets and a trio of free throws. His play (with 2 assists to boot) helped keep the Falcons in the think of things in the first half. Wes Alegaire struggled mightily in first half, connecting on just two of his nine shots. The Falcons shot a measly 33.3 percent in the first half. Ali led the way with 12 points and 3 assists. No other Falcon finished in double digits.

The Falcons usually get the win when they outrebound their opponents, they've done so seven times this season. In the first half, BG grabbed more than WSU, but the Raiders got after it in all facets for the games' final 20 minutes.

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