Ohio’s Women's basketball season officially ended in a heartbreaking overtime loss in the first round of WNIT against the University of Maryland Baltimore County Retrievers. The Bobcats loss today can be described as the tale of two halves for Ohio’s defense as they blew a 19-point lead.
Ohio’s first-half defense was dominant. The Bobcats defensive energy forced many problems for the Retrievers offense. UMBC’s Head Coach Candice Hill gave credit to Ohio’s defense when asked about her offense's first-half struggle.
“It’s their defense, it’s really good,” Hill said. “They packed the paint and forced us to shoot threes, which we struggle with. Their defense is crazy. I want to come back and see what he does defensively, because it’s so hard to score against them.”
Ohio held the Retrievers to just 16 points at halftime, which is a season low defensively. The half-time points allowed were the least of the Bobcats defensive dominance, though. Ohio was able to hold UMBC to a terrible 14.5% shooting percentage from the field in the first half, as the Retrievers only made 5 of their 26 shots.
The Bobcats were able to hold UMBC’s star player, junior forward Jade Tillman, to 0-7 on field goals with only two points at the half. On top of their ability to disrupt the receiver's shooting, their defensive pressure was also able to force 12 first-half turnovers.
“Attacking the ball, and being in the gaps,” Junior guard Asiah Baxter said about her team's ability to force turnovers. “Just taking away what we can and doing the little things.”
Despite UMBC’s strong defense playing very well themselves, the Bobcats' shut-down defense helped them open up the second quarter on a 10-0 run and have a strong lead of 19 points with just a minute left in the half.
Ohio would go into halftime with every ounce of momentum as they had a 13-point lead, 29-16.
The start of the second half was the start of a huge defensive collapse for Ohio. The Retrievers opened up quarter three on an 11-3 run to bring it to just a five-point game.
This quarter saw UMBC’s Jade Tillman finally come to life.
“Watch our games,” Hill said about Tillman consistently coming alive in the second half. “I can count only two times where Jade had a good first half. She does a good job at free throws and benefits heavily when our other girls are scoring. It takes a lot of pressure and defense off of her.”
UMBC would end the third quarter with more points than they had in the entire first half, as they scored 20. The Bobcats' once dominant defense looked completely lost as the Retrievers started catching on.
“We forced tough shots,” Ohio head coach Bob Boldon said about the differences between the defense in both halves. “Our initial defense was as good as it’s been all year. It was a rebounding disaster, though, and we didn’t force enough second-half turnovers to counteract their rebounding.”
UMBC was able to clean up their offense a lot turnover-wise.
“We tried to get the ball into the paint more and play through the contact rather than trying to pass out of it,” Hill said about her team committing fewer turnovers. “We started taking advantage of being bigger, and using ball screens, which helped open up our offense a lot.”
Despite the Retrievers' great third-quarter offense, the Bobcats still had a four-point lead heading into the final quarter.
UMBC’s offense did nothing special in the final quarter, but its defense took control of the game, and in a defensive game like this one, that means everything. The Retrievers became the team that was forcing turnovers and many missed shots, and Ohio’s defense was completely figured out at this point in the game.
The Bobcats would go on to lose in overtime 62-58 as they allowed UMBC in the second half to score over double the points they scored in the first.
Ohio’s second-half defensive collapse was not fully to blame for its loss today, as it only allowed 62 points with overtime, but its striking drop-off in between halves due to disorganization was impossible to ignore when determining why Ohio’s season ended in the first round of the WNIT.
