Donner scores 20, but Men's Basketball falls to Baldwin Wallace 79-70
By Tim Glon
ADA — Ohio Northern men's basketball team dropped a 79-70 decision to Baldwin Wallace on Thursday night at the ONU Sports Center.
The Polar Bears (4-16 overall, 0-13 Ohio Athletic Conference) got 20 points and nine rebounds from senior Daniel Donner (Bellville/Northmor).
Senior All-American Ryan Bruns (Chickasaw/Marion Local) added 12 points, junior Caleb Bryan (Pittsburgh, Pa./Montour) had 10 points and nine rebounds and sophomore Colton Bachman (Piqua) chipped in 10 points in the contest for ONU.
The Yellow Jackets (14-6, 8-5) were led by Jay Battle with 17 points.
Bruns scored in the paint with 6:35 gone in the game to give Ohio Northern an early 10-9 lead.
BW answered with a 10-2 run to go up 19-12 just 2:50 later.
The Yellow Jacket advantage swelled to 38-18, but ONU ended the half on an 11-2 run over the final 3:41 to climb within 40-29 at intermission.
Northern then scored the first four points of the second half to complete the 15-2 run and make it 40-34 with 17:39 left to play.
Freshman Daniel Unruh (Elida) scored at the 12:58 mark to get ONU within 46-41 and a pair of free throws by Bryan at the 8:07 mark trimmed the deficit to 55-51.
Baldwin Wallace scored the next six points to extend its lead to 61-51 with 6:51 to go and the Polar Bears would not get within six points the rest of the way.
"I was really happy with our energy in the second half," ONU head coach Rich Bensman said. "We were up and down in the first half and seemed to lose our energy on defense midway through the first half. Things got away from us right then, but we battled back and gave ourselves a chance to win the game in the second half."
Ohio Northern made 24-of-58 field goals for 41.4 percent and were 6-of-18 from 3-point range for 33.3 percent, while Baldwin Wallace made 27-of-50 shots from the floor for 54.0 percent and was 11-of-25 from three for 44.0 percent.
ONU won the rebounding battle by a 39-30 margin.
The Polar Bears will return to action on Saturday when they travel to No. 8-ranked Marietta for a 3 pm contest in the second game of a women's-men's doubleheader at Ban Johnson Fieldhouse.
