Wabash Goes 1-1 on the Week, with Next Game Home vs Wittenberg
In what was a close battle throughout, Wabash basketball (4-2, 2-1 NCAC) suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of the Oberlin Yeomen (2-4, 1-1 NCAC) last Saturday. In what was a much needed win for conference positioning and squad morale, the Little Giants bounced back on Wednesday to beat Ohio Wesleyan (4-4, 1-2 NCAC) 86-58.
Last Saturday, Wabash basketball lost its conference matchup against the Yeomen. This was not a strong performance for the Little Giants; in fact, it may well have been their worst game this season.
Early on the Little Giants established a 17 point lead, but 15 minutes into the game Oberlin started hitting threes. By half time the Yeomen had reduced the deficit to within two – 43- 41.
There were two big shifts in the game that led Oberlin to come back and win the game. Oberlin carried its first half momentum into the second, continuing to drain three pointers at an alarming rate.
The Yeomen finished 13-26 from deep, but there was a big difference in accuracy between the two halves.
Oberlin hit most of their threes in the second half and shot close to 60% from beyond the arch. Wabash’s lacking defense allowed the Oberlin bench to score a shocking 30 points.
The second change was that the Little Giants started taking low percentage shots. When the team was building its lead in the first half , the players were moving the ball into the paint where Schreiber was making the game look easy.
But at some point the team shifted from high percentage paint looks and started shooting threes on almost every possession.
The Little Giants only hit 10-29 threes. In the first half Wabash scored 11 points off the fast break, but only had 3 fastbreak points in the second half.
Kellen Schreiber ‘22 led the team in scoring with 22 points, while shooting a perfect 11-11. Schreiber dominated the opponent every time he got the ball. Unfortunately he was in foul trouble throughout the game. He ended up with four fouls, but still got 27 minutes. Jack Davidson ‘22 also played well securing a double-double with 17 points and 10 rebounds. He struggled a little bit more shooting, and went 5-10 from the field. Tyler Watson ‘22 had a strong first half and ended the game with 18 points.
If the team had continued to feed the ball to Schreiber like it had in the first 15 minutes, they could easily have won this game. Instead, they wasted several possessions, leaving the final score at 85-87.
Wednesday night Wabash bounced back to win their conference game against Ohio Wesleyan University. Early in the first half the Little Giants, down 7-9, went on a 28-5 run.
This proved to be definitive, allowing Coach Brumett to stray from the usual rotations, giving most of the players at least a few minutes of play time. Wabash had a season high in rebounds with 46 to dominate the Bishop’s 35 rebounds. Ahmoni Jones ‘23 led the team by pulling down 11 rebounds.
The team also had a season low in turnovers having only eight. Davidson led scoring with 22 points contributing 6 rebounds and 8 assists. Tyler Watson put up 19 points, going 7-13.
Jesse Hall ‘25 once again led the bench in scoring with 12 points, shooting 5-7, and getting seven rebounds.
However, shooting was still a little off for the Little Giants, who shot 33- 67 as a team, going 13-30 from three. They went 58% from the line, low compared to the rest of the season. Overall this wasn’t a bad game for the Little Giants; they played better than in the Oberlin game, but they will need to be better if they hope to be successful in future games.
The final score, 86-58.
These two games pushed the season record to 5-3 (2-1 NCAC). The team is set to play eight games over the winter break, six of which will be against conference teams.
Saturday 11th the Little Giants face Wittenburg (3-3) for their fourth conference game of the season.
A tough game for Wabash, the team has to step it up if they want to win.