The Ohio men's basketball team has started strong during non-conference play in its pursuit of consecutive NCAA tournament berths, despite losses to high-profile opponents Cincinnati and Kentucky.
The Bobcats rolled to a 4-0 record to begin the 2005-06 season. Ohio cruised to home victories against St. Francis (Pa.) and American before battling Marist and Rhode Island on the road, escaping both games with narrow victories.
We know how good we can play if we play our game
guard Mychal Green said. So now we expect to win we just expect to win.
Traveling to Cincinnati to take on the Bearcats, Ohio put its perfect record on the line. Ohio played with Cincinnati for the first 20 minutes of the game but came up short in the second half. The Bearcats took a one- point lead into halftime but out-scored the Bobcats by 27 points in the second half to take an 86-58 victory.
Ohio followed up its loss at Cincinnati with a comfortable win at home against Shippensburg followed by a nail-biting victory against Detroit.
Next, Ohio traveled to U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati to take on the 18th-ranked Kentucky Wildcats for a Kentucky home game. The Ohio faithful followed but could not overcome the intensity of the Kentucky-dominated crowd.
It's good to have the crowd behind you because it gives you that much more energy and confidence so I guess it helped (Kentucky) in the end forward Leon Williams said. The Bobcats out-performed the Wildcats in front of a national audience for 37 minutes, but could not hold the lead through the final minutes.
Down the stretch I would have liked to have seen us run our stuff a little bit better
Ohio coach Tim O'Shea said. Let's face it: if you're going to win a game like this on the road you really got to do all the little things down the stretch. We definitely had some miscues but nothing that's non-correctable.
Mychal Green led Ohio with 16 points and Leon Williams ended the game with a double-double, but Ohio fell to Kentucky 71-63.
Despite Ohio's two road losses O'Shea felt content about the team's situation heading into conference play.
Marist was a tough game - Rhode Island and Detroit were tough games
O'Shea said. Six-and-two at this juncture
I'm thrilled. I'm happy with that ...What I'm particularly happy about is that this (Kentucky) game was on national TV and anybody that watched it won't really think of it as an eight-point game. They'll know we gave (Kentucky) all they could handle.
With only the ESPN Bracket Buster game left Feb. 18, the Bobcats are focused now on Mid-American Conference action.
We need to work on our execution down the stretch and we'll be all right during the MAC
forward Jeff Halbert said.
Now we need to go in the MAC and keep it moving
don't have a let down
Green said. Just try and go to dominate.
Ohio (6-2 overall) begins MAC play 7 p.m. Wednesday in The Convo against Western Michigan (3-7).
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