BOWLING GREEN, Ohio – Shawn Roundtree Jr. scored 17 of his 19 points in the second half on Saturday as Central Michigan snapped a four-game losing streak, rallying for an 84-75 Mid-American Conference win over Bowling Green at the Stroh Center.
The much-needed win lifted CMU to 13-6, 2-4 MAC. Bowling Green dropped to 12-7, 3-3 MAC.
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“You’ve got to win games, that’s what it comes down to,” CMU coach Keno Davis said. “We’ve been talking the last few games that -- ‘Hey, we’re getting a lot better.’ Nobody wants to hear that. They want wins on the scoreboard, and so do we.
“We talked at halftime that you don’t win on the road by blowing teams out, you win on the road by hanging in there, hanging in there and hopefully you have enough at the end and I think that’s what you saw.”
Down 64-49, the Chippewas went on a 23-6 surge to seize a 72-70 advantage with 5:00 to play. The Chippewas then pulled out to a lead that reached 10 points with 48 seconds remaining.
Meyer ignited the spurt with a 3-pointer, and Kozinski hit two triples during the spurt, the second of which put Central in front.
The senior guard, who has been hampered all season by injuries, hit all four of his 3-point attempts in the game, and he scored 11 of his points in the second half. His 14 points were a season high.
“When you’re such a great 3-point shooter – and he’s much more than that to us, as a leader – and you have a wrist injury and a shoulder injury, even though it’s just nagging, that’s enough to throw a shooter off with the confidence and the mechanics,” Davis said of Kozinski. “He’s just getting back into form. He came up big for us.”
Roundtree scored 11 of his points during the decisive run, and he finished with six assists, five of them in the second half. CMU finished 11 for 25 from 3-point range, but was 8 for 13 from long range after halftime.
The Chippewas turned up the heat defensively in the final 12 minutes. An Antwon Lillard triple with 12:21 left gave Bowling Green its 64-49 advantage, which matched the Falcons’ largest lead of the game. But it was the last 3-pointer the Falcons would make as they went 0 for 8 from long range after that.
The win at Bowling Green should help the Chippewas put the losing streak behind them as they look ahead with two-thirds of the MAC schedule yet to play.
“Even though with the losing streak that we’ve had, we’ve been pretty resilient in all of those games to give ourselves an opportunity,” Davis said. “In practice, not only did we have the intensity that we always have, but I thought we got a lot better in certain areas.
“We want to understand that just because we won a game doesn’t mean we’re the best team in the league. We’ve got to keep getting better and with our depth and the way we play there’s no reason that we can’t be a really good team in March.”
CMU returns to McGuirk Arena on Tuesday to take on Miami (7 p.m. ET).
Bowling Green will be at Northern Illinois Tuesday (8 p.m. ET).