January 31, 2008
Bowling Green Turning Heads
by Michael Eisenstein/CHN Reporter
Oh, the difference a year makes.
Bowling Green has gone from the CCHA cellar to likely hosting a conference playoff round.
From walkover to serious threat.
From seven wins in an entire season to seven wins in less than a month.
You get the point: The Falcons surprised most onlookers by not dropping to the 11th spot they were picked to finish in the preseason conference standings. Rather, they rose into the top half of the CCHA.
But after blindsiding college hockey with a 6-2 start, including a five-game winning streak and two overtime victories, Bowling Green has hit a glass ceiling.
And that obstacle is ranked teams — Bowling Green is just 1-9 against them. This past weekend, then-No. 9 Notre Dame swept the Falcons by a combined 10-2 score.
"Mentally we didn't hold up well," Bowling Green coach Scott Paluch said. "We took some poor penalties down the stretch and we just couldn't handle the emotions of a big game very well down the stretch. That was clearly the difference."
Yet those mental breakdowns have rarely reared their ugly heads against lesser competition. So the question beckons, can Bowling Green's driver so far take the Falcons to that next step among the nation's elite teams?
Bowling Green came into the year with an "enough-is-enough" attitude after most of the Falcons stuck around campus during the summer offseason. They bonded as a team and worked out together, focusing on speed training. The message: the past is the past, but the last few seasons' results cannot be repeated.
And the underdog status given to the team from the get-go motivated them even more to change.
"That was our biggest thing going into the offseason — coming into the year we didn't want to have another losing season," senior tri-captain Derek Whitmore said. "When all those preseason rankings came out, we were obviously at the bottom of the barrel.
"We've had a lot to prove this year and that's kind of something we've established as a team."
Bowling Green was able to turn back-to-back overtime victories over Western Michigan at the beginning of the year into a five-game winning streak and season-swinging confidence — something it didn't have last year.
"This group here, by going through some early success, believing that we could win games and win consistently, it really does go a long way," Paluch said.
Now that they're racking up the victories, the Falcons are no longer sneaking up on teams. But senior forward Ben Geelan thinks a reinvigoration of that attitude could turn around Bowling Green's fate against ranked teams when it faces Michigan State at the end of the year.
"We just need to go out against like a Notre Dame and act like they're the best and put everything out there that we have," Geelan said. "We need to forget about pressure because I think we're in a situation where we don't have any pressure. We're going up against teams that are already there and I think we're in a good situation every night to open up some eyes."
It's not like Bowling Green is losing by large margins, either. Just a few of the games have been more than two-goal Falcon loses. It's simply a matter of Bowling Green putting together a string of complete games like the Falcons did against then-No. 1 Miami in their lone victory against a ranked opponent. Then they'll be surprising the country once again.
But for now, they're just thrilled with being able to control whether or not they are hosting a CCHA playoff game, a luxury they didn't have last year.
"If you had told me at the beginning of the year that we'd have home ice, I would've been, 'Holy smokes, that'd be awesome.'" Whitmore said. "But now that goal is very attainable and we're not expecting anything less."
BG sucks.
The class of the CCHA remains Miami, MSU, Michigan, and ND. end of story.
Jan 31 2008, 11:34 pm by G, STL
Fair article. BG is again on cusp of returning the schools rightful hockey home in the top 4 of the CCHA. BGSU has and always be as a founder and NCAA Champion the Class of the CCHA.
Feb 1 2008, 10:52 am by Ron M, Lansing MI
B-G-S-U (c-k-s)
Feb 7 2008, 4:01 pm by Alex, Ann Arbor MI
