OXFORD -Gone are Archie Aldridge, Randy Ayers and John Shoemaker. And now gone, too, are the last remnants of the Miami Redskins' domination of Ohio University and the Mid-American Conference basketball race.
The jinx is over. The Bobcats have beaten the Redskins. Finally.
They did it, 74-68, rallying from a seven-point halftime deficit in Miami's Millett Hall. No current Bobcat player had ever beaten Miami, and OU had won just three of 16 games this decade.
All of that's changed now.
They did it despite playing what OU Coach Dale Bandy said wasn't one of our better games at all. They did it because of one man. They did it because of Steve Skaggs.
Like so many times before, Skaggs was a one-man show.
The Flatwoods, Ky., senior who had never beaten Miami in six tries, scored 29 points on 12-of-21 shooting and pulled down five rebounds. The statistics do not tell the true story.
The Bobcats struggled in the first half, something they couldn't forget despite all the hysteria of finally ending their long losing streak to their arch-rival.
We played about as bad as we could in the first half
Skaggs admitted, even while a group of Bobcats in another corner of the locker room were shouting, We got 'em in Oxford we got 'em in Oxford!
The Bobcats' poor first half showing made Skaggs' super performance all the more important. As leading scorer Tim Joyce's shooting slump continued -he scored just six points for the half and 15 for the game -Skaggs took up his slack and everybody else's. He scored 16 points with Miami's best defender, 6-foot-2 Tom Dunn, all over him. There were 16 of OU's 34 halftime points.
And when the Bobcats took over in the second half, it was the 6-5 guard who once again led the charge, knocking in 10-, 15-and 20-footers when every one of the 2,824 fans and every player knew he was the entire Bobcat offense this night.
He makes the big plays with the pressure on said disappointed Miami Coach Darrell Hedric. I don't know what he ended up with
but he just killed us. He's been doing it against everybody for the past four years now.
That's why Skaggs is OU's second-leading scorer of all time, and that's why his game didn't surprise Bandy at all.
The pressure hasn't gotten to Skaggs for years
why should it now? Bandy asked in the exuberant Bobcat locker room afterward.
Skaggs wasn't about to let just another great game and just a little more praise swell his head.
I never felt the pressure to score points
he said. I got some good shots off in the first half
but I didn't get the key buckets when I wanted them.
True, he missed six of 14 shots. Everyone's human -even Steve Skaggs. And the Bobcats certainly looked it in the first half.
Aided by atrocious OU defense, Miami, averaging 68.5 points per game and 46.4 percent of its shots, jumped out to a 41-34 halftime lead behind 19 of 36 shooting from the field.
I thought some of our guys lost their poise
Bandy explained. We're not a very patient team.
Freshman Spindle Graves had five steals and six assists for the game, but turned the ball over five times and appeared to be trying to play too much one-on-one in the opening half. But in the second half, he and the 'Cats regained the poise, speeding the game's tempo and taking control in the half's opening minutes.
The 'Cats blitzed the 'Skins, 17-5, in the second half's first six minutes, to take the lead, 51-46, on six points from Brewer Gray and five from Skaggs. Gray, who had 20 points in Saturday's 101-82 romp over Western Michigan, had been held to just two in the game's first 20 minutes.
When we came out in the second half
we could have been behind by 15 (with the press)
Bandy said. But we started off well.
It was the airplane press
Graves said, holding both arms at shoulder level. We ran off three straight buckets and it forced Miami out of their game.
