Feb. 10, 2007
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ATHESN, Ohio - The Ohio men's basketball team had its three-game winning streak stopped with an 81-74 loss to Northern Illinois in front of a season-high 6,318 fans at The Convocation Center on Saturday, Feb. 10. It was the Bobcats' first home loss of the year and ended a 14-game winning streak at The Convo.
Ohio (16-8, 7-4 MAC) shot 36.5 percent from the field (23-63) and 22.2 percent (6-27) from behind the arc. The Bobcat defense forced 25 Northern Illinois turnovers, scoring 22 points off the miscues. The Huskies shot 59. 2 percent (29-49) from the field and connected on 47.4 percent (9-19) of their three-pointers.
"We had some good looks, but you need to put the ball in the basket at some point," Head Coach Tim O'Shea said. "I'm going to watch the tape right now with the coaching staff, so I'll have a better sense of that when we go through it sequence by sequence and it'll be a little bit clearer."
Ohio had four players in double figures led by Leon Williams's (Baltimore, Md.) 18 points and eight rebounds. Jerome Tillman (Beavercreek, Ohio) had 15 points and nine rebounds, marking the 21st game in a row that he has scored in double digits. Whitney Davis (Ann Arbor, Mich.) scored 16 points and Sonny Troutman (Indianapolis, Ind.) had 12 points, four assists and six steals.
Northern Illinois (6-17, 3-8) won their first MAC road game of the season. The Huskies had three players score 17-or-more points. Cody Yelder was perfect from the free-throw line (7-7), helping him to a game-high 20 points. Ryan Paradise had 18 points and Shaun Logan scored 17 points.
Logan scored 13 of the Huskies' first 15 points, going 4-for-5 in the first half from three-point range. Ohio shot 41 percent (12-29) from the floor and 20 percent (2-10) from downtown in the first half, but the Bobcats' defense caused 10 first-half turnovers against the Huskies.
The first half featured five ties and seven lead changes. The Bobcats held an early 8-5 advantage, but the Huskies came back on 7-1 run fueled by five points from Logan to go up 12-9 at the 16:02 mark. A steal and a dunk by Troutman capped a 6-0 run for the Bobcats at the 14:32 mark, but Logan's third three of the half knotted the score at 15-15. Northern Illinois took its largest lead of the half on another Logan triple, giving the Huskies a 22-17 advantage with 10:07 left.
The Bobcats came back on a 7-0 run to retake the lead with 7:56 left in the half. The see-saw affair continued with the Huskies scoring five straight points to claim a 27-24 lead. Ohio took the lead one more time before intermission at 28-27, but a three-pointer by Paradise with 2:54 left gave the Huskies a 30-28 lead. NIU did not trail for the remainder of the game, leading 36-32 at the half.
The Bobcats were able to tie the score for the sixth time in the game at 36-36 on a Tillman dunk with 17:39 left in the game. The Huskies then used a 15-5 run during the next five minutes to take a 51-41 lead. Paradise keyed the run with a four-point play, drilling a three as the shot clock wound down and converting on a free throw after being fouled.
The Huskies kept the lead between seven and nine points for the next nine minutes until Pancratz hit a three-pointer to extend the Huskies' lead back to double figures. A layup by Mike McKinney pushed the NIU lead to 64-52, their largest lead of the game, with 3:40 to go.
Ohio was able to get back in the game, cutting the margin to just five points on a three-pointer by Davis with 1:28 left. The Huskies went back up by eight points with 50 seconds remaining, but the Bobcats had one more run left. Bubba Walther connected on his own four-point play, running his streak of consecutive made free throws to 33, to pull Ohio within four with 44 seconds left. The Huskies led by five when Troutman hit a layup with 26 seconds left that brought Ohio within three points at 77-74. Yelder was able to ice the game for the Huskies, however, hitting all four of his free throws down the stretch to set the final margin.
The game was "Throwback Night" at The Convo as the 1963-64 team that advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament was honored at halftime. The Bobcats donned throwback uniforms in honor of the squad, and both the Ohio Dance Team and cheerleaders joined the retro look.
Ohio gets back into MAC East play on Tuesday, Feb. 13 at Akron. Tip-off at Rhodes Arena is set for 7 p.m. It is the first of three straight road games for the Bobcats.
"We're going to be tested now," O'Shea said. "I mean obviously playing these next three on the road, we've gone from being in good position and controlling our own destiny to now being back in a situation where it's going to be a real gut check time for us to see what we can do from this point on."
