Coach Saul Phillips sent his walk-ons to the scorer's table with under a minute remaining.
But Phillips never got the chance to see them play. Because after shooting miserably from the field for much of Wednesday night, his Bobcats made seven straight field goals to close out an 84-65 win over Prairie View A&M at The Convo.
“I thought about calling timeout,” Phillips said. “But I’ve got to go home and wrap some presents. If I get a lump of coal because of it, I get a lump of coal because of it.”
Maybe it was the lure of the four-day holiday break that loomed ahead. Maybe the Ohio players’ jump shots read the wrong start time.
Whatever it was, it took the the Bobcats 36 minutes and three seconds to find their offensive stride. But when they did, Prairie View was helpless to stop them.
Jordan Dartis kicked the run off with a layup with 3:57 remaining, a welcomed easy basket in a game that featured two separate six-minute Bobcat scoring droughts. Then James Gollon added back-to-back 3-pointers, followed by a bow-and-arrow celebration in honor of his career-high 17 points.
“The two kids in the front row were having fun with me pregame,” Gollon said. “I thought I’d give them a little something.”
Dartis and Block followed with 3-pointers of their own. Then, with 1:06 remaining, Kevin Mickle punctuated the end of Prarie View’s hopes with a high-flying, one-handed dunk.
“When you get a dunk like that, you know it's over,” Dartis, who led the Bobcats in scoring with 23 points, said. “You see the other team hang their heads.”
Finally, Teyvion Kirk capped the evening off with a sweet left-handed finish at the rim with 33 seconds remaining, the seventh straight made field goal by the Bobcats, and a reminder of how odd the Ohio shooting woes were in the first place.
At the beginning of the 16-8 run to close the game, the Bobcats were shooting 38 percent. Free throws accounted for over one-third of their points.
“We were running good offense,” Dartis said. “We were just missing shots.”
By the end of the four-minute spurt, however, the narrative flipped — Ohio played its best offensive half the season.
It shot above 60 percent from the field and from 3-point range in the second half. The overall shooting numbers normalized. Nobody would know how mightily the Bobcat offense struggled by simply looking at a box score.
The players credited the offensive explosion to defense; the stops led to a more fluid offense in their minds. Part of it was probably progression to the mean considering how poorly they’d shot much of the night.
Regardless of the reason, the end result is infallible: A team with seven healthy rotation players overpowered a team that played 13.
Phillips said it himself: Wednesday’s game was a microcosm of the 2017 season. He worked with limited bodies, which forced him to distribute heavy minutes.
His players made no excuses. Guys stepped up. And despite all the injuries, the Bobcats have a winning record heading into Christmas.
Phillips expects A.J. Gareri and Ben Vander Plas will be ready to practice soon after the break. Mike Laster’s injury should make progress as will.
Phillips hopes his team will be healthy enough to play 5-on-5 more often in practice when they return from the break.
There’s only one way to ensure that will be the case.
"I just want them resting,” Phillips said. “On the couch, watching the Bobcats roll in the Bahamas.”
