Oklahoma St.-Bowling Green Preview

3/16/2007 10:53 AM

By KATE HEDLIN
STATS Writer

Injuries did not slow down Bowling Green this season. Oklahoma State hopes it might be able to when the 10th-seeded Cowgirls face the seventh-seeded Falcons on Sunday in the first round of the NCAA tournament at East Lansing, Mich.

Bowling Green (29-3) finished with the Mid-American Conference's best record before winning the league tournament by beating Ball State 67-53 last Saturday. It was just the second time the team achieved both.

The Falcons have been playing without two players who were lost to season-ending knee injuries and a third who left the team for undisclosed reasons. Plus, center Liz Honegger was bothered by an ankle sprain in the final two games of the conference tournament, but coach Curt Miller said his team enjoyed thinking of itself as an underdog.

"When everybody counted us out with our depth and our adversity we had undergone with illness and injuries, this team just kept believing in their abilities," Miller said.

Despite the depleted lineup, Bowling Green is an offensively deep team as three players have double-figure scoring averages - led by Ali Mann at 15.7 points - and another two just shy of 10 per game.

The Falcons are happy with the location of their first-round game in nearby East Lansing.

"For us, though, this is a dream come true," Miller said. "Being able to go to East Lansing, and for our fans to have a chance to follow us up there, is a dream come true. Of the eight sites where we could have been sent, we are ecstatic to be going to East Lansing."

Two of the team's players, Mann and Megan Thorburn, are from Michigan. Thorburn is a native of Mason, Mich., not far from the tournament site.

"I was thrilled to see the words 'East Lansing' pop up on the screen," Thorburn said. "It is 10 minutes away from my home, and it will be nice to be able to go home and play in front of friends and family for the first time in a long time."

This is Bowling Green's ninth tournament appearance, failing to get out of the first round in any of the last five.

Oklahoma State (20-10) is appearing for the first time since making the tournament seven times between 1989 and 1996. The Cowgirls were 6-22 last season and failed to record a win in Big 12 play.

Coach Kurt Budke pointed to the team's struggles in recent years as to why Oklahoma State had an easy non-conference schedule, facing seven teams that finished the season with losing records.

"We had to build some confidence in this program," he said. "It's been down for so long, we had to get our players believing and our fans believing that we could get this done."

Rashidat Sadiq leads the Cowgirls with 12.8 points and 6.2 rebounds per game, and Andrea Riley averages 12.6 points and 5.0 assists.

Oklahoma State won the only meeting between the teams in 1993.

The winner of Sunday's game will take on Vanderbilt or Delaware State on Tuesday.