The Ohio women's basketball team tipped off its regular season Friday with a trip to Cleveland State to play the Vikings.
Unfortunately, the Bobcats found themselves on the wrong side of a 56-34 blowout.
With 9:31 left in the first half and the score still close at 10-9 in favor of Ohio, CSU went on a 15-0 run to take a 24-10 lead with 3:47 remaining in the half. After that, a Vikings' rout was on.
The Bobcats failed to execute in nearly every facet of the game. They made only 13 of 44 field goal attempts, turned the ball over 25 times and were outrebounded 44-34.
The Bobcats' poor shooting resulted in a meager 34 points and their inability to take care of the ball resulted in 31 points for Cleveland State. Twenty-one of CSU's 44 rebounds were offensive, which led to scoring 17 second-chance points.
Under the hoop, their game wasn't much better. Ohio was pushed around and went on to surrender 42 points in the paint to the Vikings.
Jennifer Bushby led Ohio with only eight points. On the other side, freshman Shalonda Winton and senior Kailey Klein netted 19 and 12 points, respectively.
Perhaps one positive thing to take away from this game was the performance of the Ohio bench. A concern coming into this game, the Bobcats' bench came in and scored half of the team's points.
Ohio will play their second game of the season tonight against Navy. The game will begin at 7 p.m. at The Convo. Navy is entering the game at 2-0, with both wins coming in the Phoenix Classic against High Point and Elon.
Ohio coach Semeka Randall could not be reached for comment following the game.
2 Sports
Mark Emery
