Men's Basketball opens home slate with 85-69 loss to Wilmington
By Tim Glon
ADA — The Ohio Northern men's basketball team opened the home portion of its schedule with an 85-69 loss to Wilmington on Wednesday evening at the ONU Sports Center.
The Polar Bears fall to 2-4 overall and are 0-2 in the Ohio Athletic Conference, while the Quakers improve to 3-5, 2-0.
Freshman Landen Long (Mason) scored a career-high 19 points, senior Caleb Bryan (Pittsburgh, Pa./Montour) added 15 points and junior Thomas Phillips (Kenton) chipped in 11 points for ONU.
Wilmington was led by a DaeShawn Jackson with a game-high 29 points, Jerry Mansfield with 19 points and Abdul Kanu with 12 points.
Northern got off to a slow start and were not able to fully recover.
After an opening basket by Long, WC scored the game's next 15 points to go up 15-2 just 3:59 into the contest.
The Polar Bears would battle back within 25-21 on a basket by Bryan at the 11:51 mark of the half and would trail 45-37 at halftime.
The lead bounced between five and 10 points in the second half until the Quakers went on a 9-0 run to grab a 76-62 advantage with 5:00 left to play.
Ohio Northern made good on 25 of its 52 field goal attempts for 48.1 percent and was 6-of-14 from 3-point range for 42.9 percent, while Wilmington was 33-of-54 from the floor for 61.1 percent and was 9-of-20 from beyond the arc for 45 percent.
WC's full-court pressure forced 20 ONU turnovers, which resulted in a 29-13 advantage in points off turnovers.
The rebounding battle ended in a 26-26 tie.
The Polar Bears will return to action on Saturday with a 2 pm home contest against Capital.
