Box Score Another day, another pull-away Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference home victory.
Ashland University's men's basketball team won its second GLIAC game at Kates Gymnasium in three days on Saturday (Jan. 30), defeating Tiffin, 70-51. The Eagles are 16-4 overall and 10-4 in the conference following their third win in a row.
"I'm not used to that," AU head coach John Ellenwood said about another second-half lead expansion after his 100th career win with the Eagles. "That's good. We're starting to trend back up in the way we're starting to play. We have too many turnovers, but, other than that, we're being aggressive and playing at a faster pace, and defensively, we're playing with a little more passion, and the result is the final score."
Coach Ellenwood On His 100th Win An Eagle
The Dragons are 10-11, 6-8.
Junior guard Boo Osborne rebounded from a tough shooting night on Thursday (Jan. 28) at home against Ohio Dominican to score 20 points on 5-of-9 shooting from 3-point range and 5-of-6 from the free-throw line. Osborne added three steals and two assists.
"Last game, I struggled shooting," Osborne said. "Everybody had confidence in me. We knew that they run a zone. We needed a 3-point threat, and we had shooters out there, and I was just one of them."
Saturday marked Osborne's fourth 20-plus-point game of the season.
Junior point guard Adrian Cook added 16 points, five rebounds and five assists, while junior forward Marsalis Hamilton chipped in with 13 points, eight boards and four helpers.
Junior forward Wendell Davis had three points, five rebounds and a game-high six assists, and became just the ninth player in program history to record at least 1,000 career points and 500 career rebounds.
"Wendell would be the first one to tell you he doesn't care about that (the points). It's just about winning," Ellenwood said. "He's the most unselfish player that you'd want to coach."
Senior center Michael Hundley added seven blocks (one off his single-game school record), and he now has had multiple rejections in eight of 10 games in January.
The Eagles hit 12-of-26 from downtown, and have hit at least five treys in 16 games in a row.
AU's defense kept the Dragons to 27.9-percent shooting from the field and 11.8-percent shooting from behind the arc. The Eagles turned 12 Tiffin turnovers into 13 points.
Leading 21-16 with 7:50 left until halftime, Ashland turned it on with a 13-2 run to go ahead 34-18 at the 3:41 mark. The Eagles led 36-24 at halftime, and increased that advantage to 43-26 in the first three minutes of the second half.
Tiffin, however, used a 20-5 run to get the game to within two points at 48-46. AU never lost the lead, however, and ran off a 22-5 stretch of its own to end the contest.
Ashland, one game behind Findlay for first place in the GLIAC South Division and two games behind Saginaw Valley State for the overall conference lead, will finish its three-games-in-five-days stretch on Monday (Feb. 1) at 7:30 p.m. at Lake Erie (8-12, 5-9).
EAGLE NUGGETS: The Eagles are 30-6 (.833) all-time against the Dragons…Ashland is 37-15 (.712) in its last 52 games…The Eagles have won 35 games in the last two seasons, the most for the program in consecutive seasons since 2005-06 and 2006-07 (35).
Boo Osborne On His 20-Point Day
AU
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