At exactly the third hour of Sunday's basketball game-turned-marathon, Jordan Dartis leaped in a desperation attempt to block a 3-point shot for the win.
Indiana State guard Brenton Scott pulled up from the top of the key, as an exhausted Dartis tried with everything he could to get a finger on the shot. He didn't get much on his jump though — Dartis was in his 54th minute of play.
The Bobcats that watched the shot on the floor, however, looked markedly different from the unit that started the game. There were two freshman point guards, and guard Gavin Block was at center. They might have even aged a few years.
Then Scott's shot hit the back iron and rang into the air, seemingly hanging longer than the 59 minutes and 59 seconds of game time that proceeded it. But the ball fell out, and Ohio celebrated a quadruple overtime 96-94 win over Indiana State at TD Arena in Charleston, South Carolina.
"We were dead in the water," coach Saul Phillips said. "I mean, we were dead in the water. It looked like we were just kinda going to limp back to Ohio, but this group’s got a resolve to them. They showed a lot of toughness. I mean, a world of toughness."
For a good part of the afternoon, it looked like Ohio would head back to Athens in eighth place out of eight teams in the tournament. An ugly 0-3 tournament record looked likely. But in the seventh-place game at the Charleston Classic, the Bobcats turned in a comeback for the ages.
Down 16 at halftime and 18 at one point in the second half, Ohio (2-2) rallied to tie the game and sent it to overtime. Then another. And another. And another.
After those comebacks in regulation, Ohio came back from a 78-70 deficit in the second overtime behind five points by Teyvion Kirk and back-to-back 3-pointers from Block and Dartis. When Ohio fell behind by eight, there were 38 seconds left.
"No, never. Never have I been a part of a game like that," Mike Laster, who finished with a game- and career-high 25 points, said of Sunday's finish.
Dartis added 21 points of his own, and Kirk finished with a career-high 20 as well.
But as the game wore on, 60 minutes of game time wore on the Bobcats' legs. Of the five Ohio starters — Doug Taylor, Kirk, Laster, Dartis and Block — only Taylor and Laster played under 50 minutes. James Gollon played 28 minutes off the bench, too.
Taylor, who played the least of the starters, played 45 minutes — five minutes more than a full regulation game. But Block had the toughest afternoon of anyone.
"Gavin throws up before halftime, then goes and plays four overtimes," Phillips said. "You try that! That’s not fun. He’s laying on his back in the locker room right now going, 'Where’s the Pedialyte? Where’s the Pedialyte?'"
Vomit from exhaustion aside, the overtimes were nothing short of stomach-churning, either.
Block and Taylor both missed chances to end the game in the first overtime. Indiana State missed a jumper to end the second, and Kirk missed one in the third. Then Scott's 3-pointer rang out to conclude what was, undoubtedly, one of the craziest wins in Ohio history.
Phillips joked that he was prepared for overtime because of a lesson he learned under Bo Ryan: Always go to the bathroom at halftime.
But Phillips went to the bathroom, coached and won the longest game in Charleston Classic history.
“They’re all (in the locker room) jumping up and down, and I said, ‘Doesn’t seventh place feel great?’ It was the Flint MegaBowl, but we made it exciting.”
