Prochaska Named MAC Player of Year
March 10, 2009 | Women's Basketball
March 10, 2009
CLEVELAND, Ohio (BGSUFalcons.com) - Members of the Bowling Green State University women's basketball program picked up some major hardware Tuesday night (March 10). Sophomore Lauren Prochaska was named the Mid-American Conference Player of the Year, while Curt Miller was a co-recipient of the league's Coach-of-the-Year award. The awards were announced at the MAC Tournament banquet, held at the Marriott at Key Center in downtown Cleveland.
Additionally, sophomore Tracy Pontius joined Prochaska on the All-MAC First Team, giving BGSU two first-team selections for the first time in over a decade.
Awards Release from MAC Office in PDF Format
Prochaska is just the fourth Falcon to earn a league player-of-the-year honor, but the third in as many seasons. Jackie Motycka won the award in back-to-back seasons, 1986-87 and 1987-88, and Ali Mann shared the honor two seasons ago (2006-07) before Kate Achter was named the MAC P-O-Y last March.
Miller becomes the first coach in league history to win the MAC Coach-of-the-Year award in five consecutive seasons. No other coach ever has won it more than twice in a row. Additionally, Miller's fifth overall award is the most of any MAC mentor. Former Toledo coach Mark Ehlen won the award on four occasions. Miller and Ehlen are the only MAC coaches to have won the honor more than twice in their careers.
Miller's honor marks the eighth time in school history that a BGSU coach has earned the league award. Fran Voll picked up the MAC C-O-Y award in both 1986-87 and 1988-89, while Jaci Clark earned the honor in the 1992-93 season. Miller won the award outright in each of the four seasons from 2004-05 through 2007-08, before being named a co-recipient this year.
Miller shared the 2008-09 honor with Toledo's Tricia Cullop. In addition to Prochaska's Player-of-the-Year award, several other specialty awards were handed out at Tuesday night's banquet. Central Michigan's Brandie Baker was named MAC Freshman of the Year, while Ball State's Porchia Green was chosen as the league's Defensive Player of the Year and Marke Freeman of Northern Illinois won the Sixth Man of the Year award.
"I am flattered and honored to win this award, and to share it with Tricia Cullop, who has done a fantastic job in her first year with Toledo," said Miller. "Coaching awards are a reflection of team success, and of the work behind the scenes by your coaching staff. Our coaches have had one of their best years ever, and this award is a credit to my staff and to our young team for the success they have had."
The Player-, Coach- and Freshman-of-the-Year awards are the result of balloting by members of the MAC News Media Association as well as the league's head coaches. The All-MAC and All-Freshman Teams, Sixth-Man-of-the-Year and Defensive-Player-of-the-Year awards were the result of voting by the 12 head coaches only.
Pontius and Prochaska become the first set of teammates named to the All-MAC First Team since Western Michigan's Carrie Moore and Casey Rost earned the honor in 2005-06. The last time two BGSU players made the All-MAC First Team was in 1997-98, when Charlotta Jones and Sara Puthoff each earned the award.
"What unbelievable years Lauren and Tracy have had as sophomores," said Miller. "I'm very excited for Lauren to get the Player-of-the-Year award. She does everything. Everyone notices her scoring, of course, but her rebounding, her defense and her ability to make everyone around her better have made her such a special player.
"It was very exciting that the conference coaches recognized Tracy as an All-MAC First-Team member as well. What a great year she has had, after playing behind the great Kate Achter last year. To turn around and make the all-conference first team, in her first year as a starting point guard in the MAC, is just a credit to what kind of a year she has had. Tracy has made some huge plays at crucial times to enable us to win a fifth consecutive MAC championship. We could not have won the championship without her."
Prochaska's P-O-Y honor marks the first time the same school has earned the award three-straight years since Toledo did so from 1996-97 through 1998-99. This marks only the second time that three different players from the same school have won the award in a three-year span. UT's Kim Sekulski was the 1991 winner, followed by Dana Drew in 1992 and Latoja Harris in '93 (Drew won the award again in 1994).
Prochaska has had one of the top seasons in BGSU history. Currently, she leads the Falcons and ranks second in the MAC in scoring, with 17.9 points per game. A native of Plain City, Ohio, she is second on the team with 6.0 rebounds per outing, and had a team-leading total of 69 three-point field goals made. Prochaska is second in the league in scoring, and ranks among the top-50 scorers in the country. She leads the entire nation in field-goal percentage, having made over 94 percent of her attempts from the stripe to date.
In conference games, Prochaska led the league with 19.6 points per game, and also paced the MAC in free-throw accuracy, at 95.4%. She has had 11 games of 20 points or more this year, including a pair of 32-point outings and a school-record 43-point outburst in the Falcons' win over Central Michigan. She became only the second player in school history to surpass 1,000 career points before the end of her sophomore season.
Pontius, in her first year as a starter, has averaged 14.3 points and 4.3 assists per game to date, and is one of only two players in the entire MAC to rank among the league's top-10 in both categories. She, like Prochaska, is ranked among the nation's top-25 in three-point field goal percentage, and Pontius has made a total of 61 triples this year to date.
In MAC games, the Morton, Ill., native finished fourth in scoring, at 15.9 ppg, and led the league in assist/turnover ratio (2.11). She finished third in free-throw percentage (86.7%) and fourth in assists (4.8 apg) in conference contests, and has had three of her five 20-point games against MAC foes. Those games include a career-high 31-point performance at Northern Illinois, and a 27-point game at Buffalo which saw her score 17 points in the overtime period, including three-pointers on five-straight BG possessions.
Miller enters the MAC Tournament with an overall record of 176-71 in his eighth season, and has a MAC record of 94-34 through the 2008-09 regular season. He is the winningest coach in school history, and is tied for fourth on the MAC list. In MAC games only, he is deadlocked for eighth among conference coaches.
Miller-coached teams have gone 155-36 overall in the last five-plus seasons, including 96-15 in games vs. league foes (83-13 in the regular season, 13-2 in the MAC Tournament). He has guided the Brown and Orange to the MAC's best regular-season record in each of the last five years.
Miller's Falcons have won over 20 games for the sixth consecutive season, and BG has posted at least 26 wins in each of the last four years. Over that four-year span, the Falcons have gone 111-18 overall and 59-5 in MAC regular-season play. This season, he has led a BG team to the regular-season crown with nine first- or second-year players and just one senior on the 13-woman active roster. This year's team reeled off a school-record 25 consecutive wins, and has won 26 of the last 27 contests heading into the league tournament.
Pontius, after averaging 9.1 minutes and 2.8 points per game as a freshman, has averaged 32.4 minutes and 14.3 points per game this season. She is one of only two players ranked in the MAC's top-10 in both scoring and assists, and leads the entire conference in assist/turnover ratio.
In MAC games only, Pontius led the league in assist/TO ratio and ranked fourth in scoring, with nearly 16 points per conference contest. She dished out over four assists per game, and displayed the ability to explode offensively, with eight points in the final minute of regulation in an overtime win at Northern Illinois, and an incredible 17 points in an OT period at Buffalo. The latter game included five three-pointers from Pontius in five consecutive trips down the floor.
Prochaska and Pontius were joined on the All-MAC First Team by Akron's Kara Murphy, Ball State's Porchia Green and Kent State's Anna Kowalska. The entire list of All-MAC Team and All-Freshman Team selections can be found below.
Of the 20 selections to the all-conference teams (first, second and third teams and honorable mention), all 12 schools had at least one player on the list, with Ball State having three players chosen. Six schools, including BGSU, had two All-MAC picks, while five teams had one player chosen.
"We look forward to the MAC Tournament," said Miller. "There might be as many as 10 teams with the talent to win this thing. It is a matter of who will stay healthy this weekend, who will jell as a team, and who will be playing their best basketball this weekend. There is so much parity in this league that this really should be a fun, wide-open tournament."
The Falcons (26-3, 15-1 MAC) have earned a first-round bye for the conference tournament, and will face either Akron or Central Michigan in quarterfinal action on Friday (March 13) at approximately 11:00 a.m. All MAC Tournament games will be held at Quicken Loans Arena. Additionally, as the MAC's regular-season champion, the Falcons have clinched at least an NIT berth for 2009, meaning that the team will participate in national postseason play for the school-record fifth consecutive season.
2009 ALL-MAC SELECTIONS
PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Lauren Prochaska, Bowling Green
CO-COACHES OF THE YEAR
Curt Miller, Bowling Green
Tricia Cullop, Toledo
FRESHMAN OF THE YEAR
Brandie Baker, Central Michigan
SIXTH MAN OF THE YEAR
Marke Freeman, Northern Illinois
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Porchia Green, Ball State
FIRST TEAM
Lauren Prochaska, Bowling Green
Tracy Pontius, Bowling Green
Kara Murphy, Akron
Porchia Green, Ball State
Anna Kowalska, Kent State
SECOND TEAM
Jenna Schone, Miami
Britni Houghton, Central Michigan
Kourtney Brown, Buffalo
Tanika Mays, Toledo
Lauren Hmiel, Ohio
THIRD TEAM
Danielle Gratton, Ball State
Tiera DeLaHoussaye, Western Michigan
Emily Maggert, Ball State
Jessie Wilcox, Northern Illinois
Jennifer Bushby, Ohio
HONORABLE MENTION
Angel Chan, Central Michigan
Naama Shafir, Toledo
Jamilah Humes, Kent State
Ebony Ellis, Northern Illinois
Cassie Schrock, Eastern Michigan
ALL-FRESHMAN TEAM
Brandie Baker, Central Michigan
Naama Shafir, Toledo
Miame Giden, Western Michigan
Kyle Baumgartner, Akron
Tavelyn James, Eastern Michigan