Having traded leads and momentum with Bowling Green over the final 26 minutes, the Wildcats found themselves down one in the final minute. Senior and 3-point specialist Miguel Tomley put the ball on the deck and dropped in a layup to restore WSU to the lead with 28 seconds left.

On the other end, senior center Alex Tew helped harass Bowling Green big man Marcus Johnson into a near turnover that became a held ball, then a missed 3-pointer, and the Wildcats held on for a 73-70 victory over the Falcons inside Mullett Arena at the Arizona Tip-Off.

WSU plays Pepperdine at 2:30 p.m. Saturday to conclude its two games in Tempe. Pepperdine topped an ice-cold New Mexico State 82-70 on Friday, with senior forward Stefan Todorovic giving the Waves 22 points, six rebounds and five assists.

Senior guard Blaise Threatt led Weber State with 19 points, seven rebounds, four assists and five steals. Tomley’s bucket gave him 16 points, and senior wing Dyson Koehler totaled 11 points and seven rebounds. Viljami Vartiainen added 10 points and Vasilije Vucinic pitched in nine.

Paul Grua, WSU Athletics

Guard Derrick Butler led Bowling Green (2-5) with 16 points. Javontae Campbell scored 13 points. Johnson, the hefty big with unusual offensive touch, scored eight points on 3-of-15 shooting.

“The last three minutes, I thought Alex Tew was just tremendous,” WSU head coach Eric Duft said. “They had no answer for him.”

Layton High alum Preston Squire totaled three points and four rebounds for Bowling Green.

Weber State (3-4) controlled the first 14 minutes, taking a 33-25 lead on a Nigel Burris tip-in. But the Wildcats soon turned the ball over seven times over a span of six minutes. Braelon Green, a former Arizona State player back on his old campus who scored nine of his 10 points in the first half, knocked in a jumper to give Bowling Green a 43-40 halftime lead.

That grew into trouble for the Wildcats. WSU made 2 of 12 field goals over a span of five-plus game minutes while the Falcons were 8 of 14 in the same stretch. A Butler bucket brought Bowling Green to a 54-44 bulge with 14 minutes left.

Paul Grua, WSU Athletics

Weber State didn’t shoot well from the 3-point line (7 of 25) but got two big ones from Vartiainen to bring the Wildcats back to life. He made consecutive 3s, the second after a Threatt steal, and WSU got it to 54-53.

From there, the teams traded five straight buckets before a WSU stop led to a Tomley 3-pointer, putting the Wildcats in the lead 64-63 with seven minutes remaining.

That lead became 69-65 with 3:19 left when Koehler kept an offensive rebound alive and Threatt flipped in a basket.

“He just kind of does all those little things that don’t always show up on the stat sheet,” Duft said about Koehler. “During that stretch, if he wouldn’t have played like that, I don’t know if we could get back in it.”

But Bowling Green slowly built a 5-0 run for the lead as WSU missed six consecutive 3s.

Paul Grua, WSU Athletics

“Down the stretch, we could’ve got away from them,” Duft said. “We had just great looks at it and kept coming up empty … then Miggy drove it and got to the basket, put us ahead.”

Campbell put BG ahead on a free throw with 48 seconds left, then Tomley and Tew combined for the both-ends answer. Threatt added two free throws with one second left after Johnson missed BG’s potential go-ahead 3.