On the heels of its football team’s first Mid-American Conference Championship since 1968, Ohio (4-5) came up huge in a win against Morehead State (3-6). The Bobcats scored a season-high in points in the 88-76 victory by dominating in the paint.
Heading the interior attack for Ohio was junior Jackson Paveletzke, who had a season-high 23 points and eight rebounds to lead the team. Despite being one of the smaller players on the team, Paveletzke scored most of his points with his back to the basket.
“(Paveletzke) was probably the healthiest he’s been,” Ohio coach Jeff Boals said. “The first couple weeks of the season, he was banged up; he wasn’t himself. For us, he does a great job of getting in the paint … 23 of his points, probably 18 of those were layups.”
Alongside Paveletzke, senior forward AJ Clayton setting the tone for the Bobcats. Ohio secured its first lead of the game on a Clayton tip-in 20 seconds into the first, a lead that it would not relinquish for the entirety of the game.
Ohio dominated on the offensive glass early, reversing an early-season issue that had haunted the team and winning the rebound battle 35-32. Those rebounds, along with fastbreak opportunities set up by tough defense, helped Ohio outscore Morehead State 46-28 in the paint.
“It’s just about getting the ball in the paint and finishing strong,” Paveletzke said. “We preached that all week. We knew they were going to wall up in (the paint) and play one-on-one defense.”
Ohio’s entire starting five contributed 10 or more points en route to the victory. In the absence of graduate student Shereef Mitchell, Elmore James contributed 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting, the second-highest mark on the team, while junior Aidan Hadaway and redshirt sophomore AJ Brown contributed 12 and 11 points respectively.
Although Ohio’s best players thrived, the team put in work to shut down Morehead State’s best player, graduate student Kenny White. White was coming into the game off after being announced Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Week Monday. Against Ohio, White was held to just 5 points.
“(White’s) a really good player,” Boals said. “We game-planned for him. He’s a tough inside-out matchup … (I) give our guys a lot of credit for having awareness on him.”
On the back of those contributions, Ohio ended the first half up 39-33, but really began to break open the game in the opening minutes of the second half.
“I think it was more player-led, and those guys were talking about it,” Boals said. “AJ Clayton said before we came out, ‘make them call timeout.’ Anytime you can do that early in the second half, I think it builds momentum.”
Quick buckets from Hadaway and Paveletzke would extend the Bobcat lead to 11 points. After some Eagles free throws, James and Paveletzke would take turns going coast-to-coast for layups to extend it to 13.
The Bobcats would miss just five shots total in the first 10 minutes of the second half, their lead growing as large as 21 points on a layup from junior Ajay Sheldon with just over 12 minutes left in the game. And-ones from freshman Elijah Elliott and Paveletzke brought the score to the largest difference of the game, 77-54, as Ohio would put this one away.
With 2 minutes left, Ohio would sub out all of its starters, aside from Brown who had been sitting out with foul trouble earlier, marking the victory. Ohio will be on the road next Saturday at 4 p.m. against Marshall, looking to get back to .500 on the season.
“We know how dangerous we all can be as long as we continue to keep playing as one unit,” James said. “I feel like we showed that today, even when things weren’t going our way.”
