ADA—Every team goes through scoring droughts. It’s just a part of basketball.
Most teams, however, are fortunate not to go through one like Baldwin Wallace did on Wednesday night.
The Yellow Jackets went 14:24 without making a field goal, and didn’t score a point in the first 10:20 of the second half.
While this was happening, Ohio Northern was building its lead on its way to a surprising 64-42 victory over its Ohio Athletic Conference rivals. Ohio Northern improves to 6-1 on the season, 2-0 in the OAC, while Baldwin Wallace falls to 3-2, 0-1 in the OAC.
“We did a good job defending them tonight,” ONU coach Michele Durand said. “Baldwin Wallace is a great team, and they’re going to win a lot of games. They’re a perennial power in the OAC, and the entire league is super tough.”
Morgan Dumbaugh scored a game-high 21 points to lead the Polar Bears, nine of which came in the first five minutes of the game. Katie Mengos finished with a double-double, grabbing 10 rebounds to go with 10 points.
ONU trailed just twice in the game, both times by just two points in the first half. However, the Yellow Jackets were able to stay within range throughout the first half. Back to back three pointers by Mengos gave them a permanent 32-28 lead with 1:07 left in the first half. Another three by Dumbaugh put the halftime score 35-29.
The second half seemed to be a completely different story. Baldwin Wallace came out of the locker room missing all of their shots, with ONU playing a tight defense and limiting turnovers on offense. The Polar Bears scored all of the first 17 points of the second half. Baldwin Wallace finally scored its first points at the 9:40 mark, ending what had become a 24-1 run by ONU.
“Most of our halftime talk was about playing better defense,” Durand said. “In the first half, they were getting a lot of chances inside the lane. So we wanted to clog up the lane more and make them take perimeter shots. We definitely did a better job of that in the second half.
