Final.

 

I saw Nacarius Fant had 23(16 in the first half) for BG and Blue Tisdale had 18 for BG.

A better effort for BG (they led by as much as 8 in the 3rd quarter) but they're still getting everything back together. They're not nearly as good as the WC 03/04 team, but I've found myself thinking back to that team a lot with how BG has started. That Central team took it on the chin early, carrying a losing record as late as January 9th and still only 8-7 in mid-January. They lost by 28 to LexCath, 25 to Apollo, etc. It can look awful bad early on for some of these teams when they have multiple significant contributors returning from football. It will be 4 weeks on Saturday since the football season ended. BG just has to continue to improve, and they already played Apollo far better than they did the first time around. They get their tall junior center Joseph Ayers back tomorrow. Ayers left the team sometime in November but has now returned.

 

That said, this is the 4th straight game BG has lost, which hasn't happened since the 06/07 season (they lost four straight to open the season - added to the last game the year before they lost five in a row overall). This is also the latest they've had a losing record since that same season. I couldn't tell you the last time they lost 4 straight before that points because it didn't happen in any of the years covered on the scoreboard site.

 

I think BG will drop to #2 in the 4th Region rankings the next time they're issued, but no one needs to make the mistake of believing that Bowling Green is not going to still be a team to beat in the region.