At the final media timeout, the Marching 110 did what it always does: Played “Stand Up and Cheer.”
The fans who stayed long enough to hear it were split on whether there was anything to stand up or cheer about. The other fans who saw tip-off had already either made their way back out into the Tuesday evening breeze or were on their way. Some even headed for the exits far before that.
As Ohio broke its huddle to finish the final four minutes of a brutal 66-57 loss to Eastern Michigan, the band stopped playing, and The Convo grew silent, signaling that the loudest noises are often deafening silence.
“You don’t have to look back over three months to see a pretty good basketball team. We need to get back to playing like that,” coach Saul Phillips said.
Before Tuesday, Ohio had won eight of its last 10 against Eastern Michigan. Now, this rare loss to the Eagles seems like the most numbing of the four in the Bobcats’ current losing streak, which drops them below .500 for the first time this season.
Contrary to the other three, though, this game started with signs of life from the Bobcats, who jumped out to a 12-0 lead on crisp passing and cutting to defeat the 2-3 zone EMU threw their way. The Convo was rocking, with a certain buzz that had been missing around the program for a large part of conference play.
“The first five minutes of the game today was how practice has been the past couple days,” Gavin Block said of the early success the Bobcats had.
But that small slice of success was depleted just minutes later, when a fast-break dunk from the Eagles tied the game at 16. From there, EMU did what it wanted throughout the night.
The score of the game was misleading by the final whistle, due to a last-ditch effort by Ohio to make the game interesting. The Ohio deficit blistered to 20 with 10:36 remaining and reached that number twice more before the game ended. Fans were, and still are, restless for a win, and it was apparent with every EMU made shot.
By the media timeout at the 6:38 mark, some supporters began to find their coats strewn about the empty seats beside them in The Convo. Before they could exit, though, the Eagles buried a 3-pointer out of the timeout to push the lead back to that 20-point plateau.
It’s not as if Ohio wasn’t trying to attack EMU and cut into their advantage; the Bobcats tried everything to snap their skid: A starting lineup change, different lineup rotations, ways to attack a zone the way Phillips wants it attacked.
Nothing seemed to work, and nothing seems to be working in Ohio’s favor since its last win on Jan. 26.
“We just want to win, man,” Block said. “We don’t care how we have to do it. We just want to win.”
As the Bobcats made their final push to evade a humiliating loss, they scored 14 points in the final four minutes, after the band played “Stand Up and Cheer.” They cut the lead to single digits, received some cheers from the most loyal fans, those who had stuck around to watch Saul Phillips go through a handshake line and proceed to the locker room.
And when the final horn allowed Ohio’s fourth straight loss to come to an end, the Marching 110 played the last verse of “Stand Up and Cheer.” But the crowd wasn’t torn on cheering anymore.
For the fourth straight game, there was nothing for fans to cheer for at the end.
And Ohio is left to find its own way to keep trudging, by wins or by love of the game.
