Sports
Ohio Women’s Basketball out-willed on the boards, falls to Toledo, 75-66
By: Marc Goldstein
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — If the tundra-like weather outside The Convo would be any indication of how the game between Ohio (12-6, 6-2 MAC) and Toledo (9-8, 4-3 MAC), the home team would be in for a frosty realization after 40 minutes of play. Toledo, for the entire game, was everything Ohio could not be: physical on the boards and efficient in the paint. Those two factors were paramount for Toledo as it secured a 75-66 victory over Ohio.
The first quarter was inauspicious for Ohio as it mightily struggled to find any sort of rhythm offensively. Toledo waited around two minutes to sink the first shot of the day at the 8:02 mark on a three by Patricia Anumgba. Evalyse Cole would follow that up with a layup to make it a quick 5-0 lead for Toledo. The first points of the day for Ohio came on a free throw by Asiah Baxter. Although Baxter split the pair of free throws, she made another trip to the line and sunk them both to make it a two-point game.
It would take nearly five minutes for the Bobcats to cross the three-point hurdle by Danni Scully when she made two more free throws. During the Bobcats’ slump, Toledo was able to stretch its modest lead. By the end of the first, the score was 16-7 in favor of the Rockets, highlighted by a late and-one layup by Ella Weaver.
During the first quarter, Ohio went 0/9 from the field, only softened by the 7/10 mark from the charity stripe. However, Toledo did not exactly take advantage of the struggles as it only led by nine after the first quarter.
“I think it just put us down a little bit,” said Baxter. “It sucks to say, but just seeing the scoreboard and seeing (us struggle) that we’re not getting what we wanted… I think it did limit us as a team with what we wanted to do.”
Toledo responded to the mini run by Ohio by taking a timeout. The timeout appeared to pay dividends as Weaver immediately connected from deep and Cole hit a layup to extend the lead for Toledo to 26-19. Weaver would hit a second three shortly thereafter and Toledo would trade buckets with Ohio for the remainder of the half, taking a 37-30 lead into the locker room.
In the offensive resurrection for Ohio during the second quarter, all but one of the players that saw the floor scored. The leading scorer during the first half for Ohio only had four points. Despite not hitting a shot from the field in the first quarter, Ohio ended the first half shooting 37% from the field. However, that was overshadowed by Toledo shooting 50% for the entire half, thus vaulting it into the lead.
Tabeling got the second half underway for Ohio with an and-one to give Ohio a shot in the arm. That was immediately followed by two straight jumpers converted by Toledo. On the second make shot, Elli Garnett went down with an injury for Ohio with 8:39 left in the third. Garnett could put no weight on her left leg. Garnett would return to the bench, albeit in a boot and still unable to put very much weight on her leg.
The problem that losing Garnett posed to Ohio is the fact that she provides an ability that is hard to replicate: size. Garnett is Ohio’s leading rebounder and, on a team that struggles to rebound as it is, the options for a solution became incredibly limited. After losing Garnett, Ohio turned to Scully to control things down low, but she was unable to stop the force by Toledo in the post. Toledo took advantage of Ohio’s lack of size with Garnett out of the game, making use of the paint and scooping up offensive rebounds in bunches.
Ohio did try to keep things close in the third quarter. Tabeling hit some big threes to maintain some level of hope for Ohio. However, the overall lack of consistency on offense continued past the first quarter and doomed Ohio in its comeback effort. Tabeling beat the third quarter buzzer with a triple, but the score was still 58-49 in favor of Toledo after 30 minutes of play.
In the fourth, the Rockets circled the wagons and put the squeeze on the Bobcats. The comeback bid gained traction for the Bobcats on yet another and-one layup by Tabeling with 7:47 left in the game to make it 63-57. However, the Rockets held the Bobcats scoreless for the next four minutes of action, halting the momentum the Bobcats were hoping to capture.
By the time Ohio got out of its drought, the game was all but over and Toledo simply had to polish off the victory that was punctuated by layups by Cole and Miriam Diala down low.
Over the course of the game, Ohio was outrebounded by a wide margin, 43-28. Ohio head coach Bob Boldon explains that the rebounding margin is something that he is hoping his team can work to close, but admits that the effort on the boards was not close to sufficient.
“We turned the ball over too much and we’re a bad rebounding team,” said Boldon. “Until we can get those two things fixed, we’re limited on how good we can be. I wish I could fix it because we’ve been a bad rebounding team for a month. This isn’t a new problem… We’ve won some games when we got outrebounded, but we’ve been able to overcome that with good shooting. Today, we were not good at shooting and then those rebounding numbers really stuck out.”
Ohio will likely be undermanned when it next takes the floor as Scully also left the game late in the fourth quarter as she was feeling sick, either from a hard fall or another factor. Regardless, at least one of Ohio’s bigs will be unavailable for its next game, meaning that its rebounding issues might get worse before anything improves. In order for Ohio to stay afloat and figure out how to win, an increased effort will be needed defensively in order to get out and run a faster offense, according to Boldon.