BOWLING GREEN — During an insignificant possession midway through the second half, redshirt freshman Khari Harley grabbed an offensive rebound and went up to attempt a dunk.
Harley, however, was stuffed — by the rim. He proceeded to land back on the ground and backpedal a couple steps being called for traveling and falling on his back in the paint.
The forward laid on the ground for the next couple seconds in embarrassment, as other players headed back to the other end of the floor. And he remained on the ground, with his hands on his face, until teammate Maurice Ndour pulled him off the ground and spoke words of encouragement.
That play and feeling of helplessness was just a microcosm of Saturday’s 69-54 loss to Bowling Green, which out-performed Ohio in almost every statistical category.
“They played more physical than us,” sophomore forward Antonio Campbell said. “There’s nothing we can do. We played soft. That’s it.”
Harley’s miss came with 9:27 remaining and the Bobcats were already trailing by 11 points, after struggling to put together any runs throughout the game. Ohio never led and Harley’s miss came during an almost five-minute stretch in which it didn’t make a field goal.
The Bobcats shot 33 percent in their second consecutive Mid-American Conference loss, while making 8 of 11 free throw attempts. Ryan Taylor and Maurice Ndour were the lone Bobcats to finish in double-digits with 16 and 10 points, respectively.
“It was a night where it was tough to score for us,” coach Saul Phillips said. “You better be doing something in the game on that stat sheet awfully special if you’re going to endure those kinds of shooting numbers.”
After losing the MAC opener to Northern Illinois, Phillips questioned his team’s effort. Although Ohio (5-8, 0-2 MAC) was in contention for the majority of the game — trailing by just five points at halftime — it made only eight second-half field goals and trailed by 21 points during the final minutes.
“Without getting specific at all with any individual player, if you’re going to ask which team was aggressive tonight it was them,” Phillips said. “I don’t like it. Our guys don’t like it, and we’ve got to do something about it.”
One player to give the Bobcats fits was Richaun Holmes, Bowling Green’s 6-foot-8, 230-point forward, who finished with a double-double. He scored a game-high 18 points, grabbed 12 rebounds and had a handful of powerful dunks in the paint whether he was being defended or not.
Campbell, on the other side of one of those dunks, says the Bobcats’ struggles weren’t “X’s and O’s” related, but rather about the team’s toughness. He says Ohio needs a wake-up call before Toledo (9-6, 1-1 MAC) comes to Athens on Wednesday.
“This sucks. I’ve never been on a losing team in my life,” Campbell said. “No one likes losing but we’ve got about 16 more MAC games ahead of us, so we’re just going to focus on those.”
@chadlindskog
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