Box Score On Thursday (Feb. 11) night, Ashland University's men's basketball team caught Findlay for first place in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference South Division.
On Saturday (Feb. 13) afternoon, the No. 21-ranked Eagles passed the Oilers, thanks to a 63-48 win at Kates Gymnasium over Wayne State and an 81-67 Lake Erie overtime victory at home over Findlay. Ashland is 21-4 overall and 15-4 in the GLIAC following its eighth consecutive win, and is one game ahead of the Oilers (17-7, 14-5) with three regular-season games to play.
"Wayne State is such a good defensive team, and we had trouble in the first half finding some easy shots," said Ashland head coach John Ellenwood. "I thought our guys did a good job in the second half. We were able to get loose for some threes in the second half. We were able to spread them out in the second half."
Coach Ellenwood Post-Game Comments
The Eagles also are two games behind Saginaw Valley State (21-4, 17-2) for the overall conference lead and a potential No. 1 GLIAC Tournament seed. AU is the No. 2 seed through Saturday, and needs just one more win in the next two weeks to clinch a GLIAC Tourney Quarterfinal at Kates Gymnasium on Tuesday, March 1.
The Warriors are 7-15, 7-12.
Junior guard Boo Osborne led AU with 16 points to go with five rebounds and three steals. Five Eagles scored at least seven points in the victory.
Saturday's story, however, was defense. Ashland kept Wayne State to 35.3-percent shooting from the field and 31.3 percent from the 3-point line, and had nine blocks as a team (five by senior center Michael Hundley).
The 48 points allowed were Ashland's fewest since an 89-47 home win against Silver Lake on Nov. 20, 2015, and the fewest in a GLIAC game since an 80-47 home win over Findlay on Jan. 22, 2015.
During their winning streak, the Eagles are allowing 61.8 points per game.
"I think our alertness is a little bit better," Ellenwood said. "We've kind of focused on little things. You don't drastically change things if you lose, but you make minor tweaks."
The Eagles led a low-scoring first half 21-11 with 2:55 before halftime, then took a 27-17 advantage into the break. Wayne State cut its deficit to 32-27 at the first media timeout of the second half, then Ashland went on a 16-1 run to pull away.
Ashland's win was the 1,150th in program history.
The Eagles will return to the road to take on Ohio Dominican (9-16, 6-13) on Thursday (Feb. 18) at 7:30 p.m.
THE NOTEBOOK: This is the Eagles' second eight-game winning streak of the season, after starting 2015-16 winning eight in a row…Ashland has won 24 of its last 29 games (.828) at home, and the five losses in that span have been by a total of 16 points…The Eagles' 40 wins in the last two seasons are their most in back-to-back years since 1990-91 and 1991-92 (47), and their .741 winning percentage since the start of 2014-15 is the program's highest since then, as well (.797)…Junior forward Wendell Davis (1,236) needs five points to pass Angelo Edwards (1,240) for 14th place on the program's all-time scoring list.
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