Ninety minutes before tipoff, as has been the case before every home game this season, Nick Kellogg was the first Bobcat on the court. He attempted shot after shot while assistant coach Bill Wuczynski grabbed rebounds and fed the ball back to him.
Kellogg mouthed the lyrics to Drake’s “Trophies”, which was playing on The Convo’s speakers, as he rotated around the perimeter and worked on the staple of his game: his step-back jumper.
But Kellogg, a senior guard, and his teammates, weren’t able continue their quest to bring home the trophies they had adjusted their sights to and fell to Virginia Military Institute 92-90 in the quarterfinals of the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.
Entering the CIT, some Ohio players were unenthusiastic about the second-rate postseason tournament after a heartbreaking loss to Akron in the Mid-American Conference Tournament.
But after winning their first two games with different players putting the team on their backs, the Bobcats came to the conclusion that they might as well go out on top.
“Once you win one or two games, why not win it all?” junior guard Javarez “Bean” Willis said at practice this week.
In Wednesday’s game against a VMI team with the second-fastest pace in the NCAA, the Bobcats held serve with what coach Jim Christian said was the best defense he’s seen out of his team in 15 games.
One of Ohio’s senior cogs,
forward T.J. Hall, finally relented after battling multiple injuries throughout the season and watched the game from the bench.
Hall is a player Christian said the rest of the team pulls extra hard for every game because of the pain he usually plays through. But the pain was too much Wednesday, and the injury left the Bobcats with eight eligible players against a team that averages 75.1 possessions per game.
“He couldn’t go,” Christian said. “He didn’t practice. He couldn’t go to the walk-through (Wednesday). He said before the game his ankle and knee — he was trying, he couldn’t do it.”
Eventually, Ohio just ran out of gas.
After holding a lead of as much as 17 points in the first half, the Bobcats trailed by 12 with 3:25 remaining. But, sticking to a common theme this season, a comeback was never out of reach.
The Bobcats rallied to trim the deficit to as close as two in the final minutes, but several poorly executed possessions in the final minute ended Ohio’s season.
In the loss, Kellogg, who scored a combined eight points on 4 of 17 shooting in Ohio’s first two CIT contests, stepped up like a senior second-team all-conference player does.
For his final act at The Convo, the senior guard from Westerville scored a career-high 30 points and was a catalyst for Ohio’s late-game surge with eight points in the final 2:13 of the game.
Kellogg was teary-eyed at the postgame news conference, saying it had finally struck him that his playing days at Ohio were over.
“I thought I had a really good four years here,” he said. “With all the fan support and playing for two coaches and playing with great guys, it all just kind of hit me in that moment. But I’ve realized that I’m lucky to be here and improve not only as a player, but as a person, as a teammate and as a leader.”
And after amassing a MAC-record 290 triples and leading the 2013-14 squad with 15.5 points per game, Kellogg has nothing left that he must prove.
@C_Hoppens
ch203310@ohiou.edu
