CLEVELAND — Neither Stevie Taylor nor Javarez “Bean” Willis put up especially gaudy stat lines, but when it mattered the most, each rose to the occasion in Ohio’s second-round Mid-American Conference Tournament victory against Miami.
The duo of junior point guards each hit a pair of 3-pointers when the game tightened in the second half to help the Bobcats advance past the RedHawks 63-55 Wednesday.
After a layup and a triple by Miami freshman guard Jared Eustace gave the RedHawks a 43-39 lead with 10:49 remaining in the contest, Taylor came back up the floor and knocked down 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions.
“I told (Taylor) that, ‘We can’t win games in this tournament without you. … You’re going to have to give us everything you’ve got’,” Ohio coach Jim Christian said. “I thought he played with a lot of courage tonight.”
And when RedHawks eventually retook the lead, Willis knocked down a pair of 3-pointers of his own with to push the Bobcats ahead again, knocking down his second on a pull-up jumper stemming from a Jon Smith steal.
“At that point in time, there’s limited time left in the game,” Willis said. “If you’re going to shoot it, then you have to shoot it with confidence. … I shot it knowing that I had to make it and I did.”
Miami didn’t quit, however, trimming the lead back to within one point with 38 seconds left. But Ohio senior guard Nick Kellogg finished off the Bobcats’ second-half heroics, taking the ball to the hoop and completing an and-one opportunity. The free throw gave the Bobcats a four-point lead and essentially sealed the win.
But the first half wasn’t a shining example of how beautiful the game of basketball can be, as both teams combined for 20 team fouls, which averages out to a foul a minute.
“It’s kind of tough, but it’s part of the game,” Kellogg said. “You just have to adapt and adjust to it. If that’s the way (the officials) are calling it, that’s how they’re calling it. I think it’s up to us to stop fouling.”
On top of that, there was a pair of lane violations, blood on the floor and a shooting performance that made it seem like there was a lid on the rim.
Ohio shot 7 of 26 from the field in the first half, while Miami actually managed to shoot worse, connecting on 7 of its 30 attempts before the break.
There was also a nine-minute, 28-second stretch in which the Bobcats didn’t make a basket. A Kellogg 3-pointer with 7:39 before half served as the first made field goal since Willis made a shot from downtown at the 17:07 mark.
Awaiting the Bobcats in the quarterfinals is an Akron team that crushed Ohio’s MAC Championship and NCAA Tournament bid chances last season with a 65-46 win in the tournament’s title game.
Kellogg said it wouldn’t be a MAC Tournament without meeting a Zips team that split the regular season series against the Bobcats this year.
“Obviously they’re a really good team,” Kellogg said. “We felt like we’ve built some momentum winning these two games prior to this game, so we know what kind of energy and effort it’s going to take to beat them.”
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@C_Hoppens
Up Next:
What: No. 5 Ohio vs. No. 4 Akron
Where: Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland
When: 6:30 p.m., Thursday
