Sports
Ohio Men’s Basketball drops season opener to Arkansas State
By: Grant Kiefer
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Welcome home, college basketball.
Opening night of college basketball signifies a four-month sprint through the regular season. Ohio’s non-conference schedule to start the season is a sprint—if you had to do it barefoot on hot asphalt.
The Bobcats opened the season against Arkansas State, which was picked to finish second in the Sun Belt. They will follow that up with Illinois State, the Missouri Valley favorite, Saint Mary’s, and Louisville, two perennial NCAA Tournament teams, and that’s just the first four games.
Ohio fell to Arkansas State 89-85 Monday night, signifying a potential rocky start despite some stellar performances across the board.
Aidan Hadaway finished with a career-high 28 points, which comes off two impressive performances in the team’s exhibitions from the senior forward. It’s unclear just how much the offense will go through Hadaway this season, but he believes it can be anyone on any given night.
“I feel like it’s going to be a different guy every single night with his team. I guess it was my night to go through me, but it didn’t work out, so,” Hadaway said.
Ultimately, it was a tale of two halves for the Bobcats. Despite shooting 5-17 from beyond the arc in the first half, Ohio forced a whopping 16 turnovers, en route to a 39-32 halftime lead. Arkansas State would respond with just two turnovers in the second half, though, and play a clean brand of basketball for the final 20 minutes.
“You’re not winning many games giving up 57 points and putting them at the foul line 21 times in the second half,” Boals said.
Ohio had the game close late, but Arkansas State had timely baskets and were in the double bonus for the majority of the half. Free throws ended up being the ultimate difference maker, as the Red Wolves shot 25-28 while Ohio went 15-22.
While down 89-85 with seven seconds to go, the Bobcats took three seconds to advance the ball up the court and call a timeout. Boals drew up a play for Hadaway to hit a three, but Arkansas State covered him well. This led to an inadvertent three from Ajay Sheldon that effectively ended the game.
With Ohio’s three-point shooting, it’s apparent that this team will live and die beyond the arc. While the Bobcats went just 8-26 from three, about 20 of those were good looks. Similarly, in the team’s final exhibition against Ohio State, the team shot 37 threes, and about 30 of them were good looks. It’s just a matter of the ball going through the hoop.
“We were pleased with our looks,” Boals said. “The biggest thing is, the stretches in Ohio State and even the stretches here, you can’t let your missed shots offensively affect your defense.”
Ohio will have to have short-term memory as it hosts Illinois State on Thursday for its first game of the season. A win over the preseason Missouri Valley Conference favorites could stop the bleeding ahead of two games against NCAA Tournament caliber teams, which the Bobcats will be heavy underdogs in.