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Plowden impresses back home in college debut

11/11/2017, 3:00pm EST
By Josh Verlin

Daeqwon Plowden (above) had nine points and grabbed three rebounds in his first collegiate game. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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For most of the Bowling Green roster, a season-opening trip to Drexel meant a venture into unfamiliar territory, against a Dragons program that the Falcons had never played before in its 100-plus years of basketball.

For Daeqwon Plowden, it meant a trip home.

The Germantown-area native became one of the lucky few players who go elsewhere for college, only to start his career at the next level right back in the city he knows best.

Even though head coach Michael Huger told Plowden to stay calm and soak it all in, that’s easier said than done, with over 100 friends and family in the stands to see him make his Division I debut.

“I would say I was still focused on it, but then again it went out the window a little bit, the heat of the moment,” Plowden said. “Just [tried] remaining focused throughout the whole game and playing possession by possession, not giving anything away.”

Plowden is one of two Philadelphia-area products on the Bowling Green roster, both freshmen; Matiss Kulackovskis (Archbishop Ryan) is sitting out this season after tearing his ACL in the preseason.

Most of the BGSU roster -- seven players in all -- hails from Ohio, where the school is located in the northern part of the state, less than 30 minutes south of Toledo and the nearby Michigan border. Two others are from Florida, one’s from Illinois; a third Pennsylvania native, Lincoln Park’s Nelly Cummings, is a freshman from the western part of the state.

For the players who don’t live in the Mid-American Conference’s Great Lakes footprint (Ohio/Indiana/Michigan/Illinois/New York), it’s not often they’ll get a chance to play in front of friends and family.

“I try to get it when we can,” Huger said. “If you wait until senior year and we can’t get the game, then we never had that chance to get them home...It just so happened that they had this slot open and we had this slot open and it worked out.”

Plowden found out about the game early in the school year, when Bowling Green was ready to announce its full schedule.

Dozens and dozens came out to the Daskalakis Athletic Center just to see him play -- family and friends, his former teammates as well as some teachers at Mastery Charter North, and more.

And they certainly got to see what has the Bowling Green staff excited about the 6-foot-5 freshman’s future.

In helping his team to a 78-69 win, Plowden contributed nine points and three rebounds in 18 minutes of work, hitting four of the five shots he took.

“I thought Daeqwon played exceptionally well tonight,” Huger said. “He’s done a great job, is coming along real smooth and the sky’s the limit for him.”

Plowden entered the game a little under four minutes in and didn’t do much for the first few possessions. He let fly on his first opportunity, a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer from the right wing, and it found nothing by net.

“It was a comfort shot,” Plowden said. “After I hit it, I got more comfortable, got a little more into a rhythm. It was nice.”

Shortly after the triple came a block on a Troy Harper layup; when he re-entered the game later in the first half, Plowden had a driving right-hand layup as well as a two-handed dunk off a steal.

“Usually when you miss your first shot on your first game, that’s trouble,” Huger said with a laugh. “But once he made the first shot, I knew he was going to be good.”

At 6-5 and just shy of 200 pounds, Plowden is an impressive athlete with long arms and solid physique, which helps him guard just about any position on the court. Offensively, he played anything from the ‘3’ to the ‘5’ in high school, and while his future in the sport is certainly out on the perimeter, the Falcons will take advantage of his interior abilities, posting him up several times and utilizing him on ball screens as well.

“We don’t really have positions, we don’t define our guys,” Huger said. “For us, he’s a player. He can play on the perimeter, he can play inside. He does it all, that’s what I like to have is guys who can do multiple things.”

Plowden is certainly not one of Philadelphia’s most recognizable Division I recruits over the last few years. He spent his high school years at Mastery Charter North, where the Pumas competed in one of the lower levels of the Public League.

As a junior, he led Mastery North to the PIAA Class AA state championship game, pouring in 24 points and grabbing 11 rebounds in the loss to Aliquippa. By the end of his senior year, he was the first in the school’s hoops history to get to 1,000 points.

Between those years, after his final AAU summer with K-Low Elite, he committed to Bowling Green, choosing the first school that had offered him over CCSU and NJIT.

Going from a school that played in the “C” division of the Public League to one that hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 1968, Plowden certainly embraces the underdog mentality, even if he wasn’t particularly thinking about showing Philly schools what they might have missed out on.

“I just wanted to start the season off strong,” he said. “I always want to play with a chip on my shoulder, whether it comes (against) the high-[major] schools like a Duke or Kentucky or a lower school, it doesn’t matter, I want to play with a chip on my shoulder each game.”

Bowling Green continues its season on Monday with a home game against South Dakota, with tipoff scheduled for 7 PM.


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