Bowling Green plays its first home game of the season Monday night, and the Falcons arrive at the Stroh Center with a milestone already in hand. Bowling Green (1-0) hosts Cleveland State (1-1) at 7 p.m. Monday, November 9, in a game streaming on ESPN+ with a radio feed on WFRO Eagle 99, Bowling Green State University Athletics announced.
The Falcons opened the season with a 76-73 road win at Georgia State — the 1,500th win in program history, making Bowling Green just the fourth current Mid-American Conference program to reach 1,500 all-time wins, joining Akron at 1,774 and others, according to BGSU Athletics. Bowling Green finished 18-14 overall last season with a 10-7 home record and averaged 14.1 assists per game, the Associated Press reported in its game preview.
Cleveland State comes in off its first win of the season, a 103-79 home victory over Michigan-Dearborn on Friday night in which Rayvon Griffith scored 34 points, the Associated Press reported. The Vikings, who went 11-22 overall and 3-13 on the road last season, begin a four-game road trip — their longest of the season — with Monday’s game, Cleveland State Athletics said. Cleveland State is the first of two MAC teams the Vikings will play this season.
The matchup renews an in-state series Bowling Green leads 11-8 all-time, though each team has won five of the last ten meetings, according to Cleveland State Athletics. The teams last met in 2019, when Bowling Green won at home 72-58; Cleveland State’s last win in the series came in 2018 at the Wolstein Center, 82-64.
Monday’s game opens the home portion of a schedule that brings seven non-conference opponents to the Stroh Center, including Niagara, Northern Illinois and Gardner-Webb, BGSU Athletics said. The Falcons are playing their 112th season of men’s basketball.
What happens next: tip-off is 7 p.m. Monday at the Stroh Center. A Bowling Green win would mark the fourth time in the past five seasons the Falcons have opened 2-0, according to BGSU Athletics; Cleveland State, meanwhile, heads from Bowling Green to Huntsville, Alabama, for games against West Florida on November 13 and host Alabama A&M on November 15.
Photo: Rudytoots, CC BY-SA