Story by Max Alfonso | Photos by Kyle Brown
BOWLING GREEN – In a Friday night tilt at the Stroh Center, the University of Toledo Rockets kept the Battle of I-75 trophy with a 84-71 win over the Bowling Green Falcons (7-12).
Toledo (11-8) came out hot with a 7-0 run to start the game. Isaiah Adams started with a quick 5 points and finished with 18.
Marcus Johnson answered for BG after the Toledo run to start the game with 8 points, including two deep threes. He came into the game as BG’s leading scorer, averaging 16.4 per game. The senior forward finished with a game high 28 points.
Sophomore guard Bryce Ford made four big treys for Toledo. He started the year coming off the bench but moved into the starting lineup in the first MAC conference game against Western Michigan.
“We needed some floor spacing,” said Toledo head coach Tod Kowalczyk about Ford. “We needed to get better defensively on the perimeter and what he did tonight played big in big moments. I’m happy for him.”
Toledo guard Sonny Wilson had 18 points on an efficient 7-9 from the floor, and made his only three-point attempt.
Toledo came into the game 9th in conference play in three-point percentage (3P%) but went 12-24 Friday night.
“You’ve gotta give up something when you have mismatch problems out there,” Bowling Green head coach Todd Simon said. “Numerically, you would say yeah, you might have to give up a couple three’s to guys that are not making them.”
Johnson made a three to cut the lead to 6 with four minutes left. But Simon says they ran out of gas late.
“Right now we’re squeezing too many minutes out of everybody. It catches up with you at some point, I think the fatigue is certainly showing,” said Simon, who’s in his second season with the Falcons after spending seven seasons at Southern Utah.
Toledo moves to 99-84 all-time in the battle of I-75 rivalry.
“This is a heck of a rivalry,” said Kowalczyk, who has played against the Falcons since 2010. “I know Senderoff and Groce disagree; they keep saying it’s the best rivalry in the MAC. It’s not .. this is. And if I offend those other two schools, it’s okay.”
Toledo, 4th in the MAC, travels to Athens Tuesday to take on Ohio, and Bowling Green goes east to Kent State to take on the Golden Flashes.
