Ohio didn’t play its best basketball Saturday against Akron. In fact, it may have been the worst it's played all season. There’s plenty of reason to be pessimistic following a lopsided loss against the reigning conference champions; still, if Ohio fans have learned anything from the 2024 football season, there’s also some optimism in the loss.
In its third Mid-American Conference game of the season, the Ohio football team fell in a lopsided fashion to rival Miami on the road. Many fans and media (including myself) had doubts regarding Ohio’s potential championship aspirations after struggling to put up a fight against one of the conference’s best teams.
By now, we all know how that story ends. Ohio used the loss to turn things around all the way up until the team was tasked with facing Miami a second time in the MAC title game. The Bobcats took down the Redhawks in dominating fashion (38-3) despite being outmatched earlier in the season.
Circumstances were different for basketball — coming into the season, Ohio Men’s Basketball was ranked first in the MAC near-unanimously while Ohio Football was ranked fifth. However, it’s hard not to draw parallels between Ohio Football’s Week Eight loss to Miami (OH) and Ohio Men’s Basketball’s most recent lopsided loss to Akron.
No one in the conference would be shocked if Ohio matched up with Akron when the calendar flips to March and the MAC Tournament begins. Although Ohio will still have one more chance to see Akron before a potential tournament matchup, the team can use its most recent loss as a tool in March.
Don’t get me wrong — if Ohio is an unchanged product from what we saw last Saturday, then it can all but say goodbye to its championship aspirations. However, that doesn’t seem likely, given the absences Ohio dealt with and the team having a former MAC Champion coach in Jeff Boals.
Boals knows what it takes to win the MAC, and he recognizes that what the team did Saturday was not that.
“Any time you lose, you learn a lot about yourself,” Boals said. “The first half was kind of uncharacteristic; we got a little outside of ourselves …When you play a really good team you have to capitalize on opportunities, we didn’t do that till the second half.”
It’s long been a cliche that to be a successful team, you first need to get knocked down. Ohio was undoubtedly knocked down on the road against Akron.
It’s important to note that at halftime against Akron, The Post learned junior Elmore James, one of Ohio’s consistent starters, had stepped away from the team. Additionally, junior Aidan Hadaway left James A. Rhoades Arena on crutches following a second-half ankle injury. Despite that, Ohio played far from its best basketball.
Against Akron, Ohio trailed by 10 or more points for almost the entirety of the second half. Its defense seemingly had no answer to Akron’s offensive attack, and its offense took more than half the game to start scoring at an efficient rate.
“Without watching the film, we need to change how we play defensively,” Boals said. “I thought we had some good looks, but we finished with three or four missed layups and had some missed open threes. If you make those, then it's a different basketball game.”
Following last season’s MAC Tournament defeat at the hands of Akron and the first edition of the game this season, Ohio has slowly settled into somewhat of a rivalry with Akron when it comes to Men’s Basketball. Ohio played with a rivalry-type motivation due to its recent losses in big games against Akron.
Now, with potentially two more games against the Zips, the Bobcats’ motivation will be even greater to take down a team that has caused it so much trouble in recent years.
