Travis Marmon
Sports Editor
The men’s basketball team failed to extend their streak of four straight NCAC titles this past Saturday, falling in the conference championship to hot-shooting Ohio Wesleyan University by a score of 76-66. Although Wooster lost its chance at an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, they were awarded an at-large bid and will face Penn State Behrend in the first round tomorrow at 7 p.m. in Timken Gymnasium.
The NCAC tournament started well for the top-seeded Scots, who steamrolled the eighth-seeded Oberlin College 74-47 in the first round. The semifinal game was a sound 78-66 victory over Wittenberg.
Wooster had defeated the Battling Bishops twice during the regular season. Still, the Scots knew it would be close. They won both games by seven points or less, and one went into overtime before the Scots could pull ahead. The game was fairly even in the first half, with Wooster holding a slim 30-29 lead at the break.
The Bishops started out hot in the second half and pulled ahead of the Scots, 41-35, with 15 minutes to play. The Scots responded by going on an 11-0 run, punctuated by a vicious two-handed dunk by Jake Mays ’13, to take a 46-41 lead.
The defining run of the game, though, came in the second half with eight minutes to play. Wooster led by a slim margin of 53-50. Ohio Wesleyan proceeded to rattle off an 18-2 run over the next six minutes, nine of which came off three pointers, to take a commanding 68-55 lead with two minutes to go. Wooster would get no closer than 10 for the remainder of the game, and the Battling Bishops took the NCAC crown, 76-66.
The story of the game was 3-point shooting. Ohio Wesleyan hit 45 percent of their shots from beyond the arc (9-20), while Wooster shot an abysmal 12 percent (2-17).
Wooster dominated the offensive glass, getting 18 offensive boards to OWU’s nine. This advantage on the boards allowed Wooster to take 71 shots to OWU’s 50, but the Scots could not connect on enough of those shots to make up for the Bishops’ hot shooting from three.
Doug Thorpe ’14 played well for the Scots, tallying 24 points, five assists and four steals to earn a spot on the all-tournament team alongside teammate Evan Pannell ’15, who scored a career high 21 points in the game against Wittenberg.
Wooster’s first opponent in the NCAA tournament will be Penn State Behrend, a satellite campus of Penn State University located in Erie, Pa. The Lions are 20-8 on the season and champions of the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference. PSB is led by 6’9” senior center Conley Russ, who averages 19.6 points and eight rebounds per game on 60 percent shooting.
The last time the Scots and the Lions played each other, Steve Moore was not yet the coach at Wooster and the year was 1987. The Lions won the match-up 68-63.