Bad news/good news so far from Dekalb. Ohio traveled only 7, leaving Burris and Bambule, among others, in Athens, and fell behind by double digits in the first five minutes. But the Bobcats surged back to tie it at 26 at the end of 1. Alexandra Antonova, in the first non-garbage time minutes of her career, went 2-2 from three.

Just curious as I saw her Pops on TV and remembered I had not seen anything about Pope since then. We saw her down at Liberty .....

EDIT.....NVM found it after reading through the entire thread.

I haven't heard anything yet on Cece. Ugh, that one hurt to watch. But we pretty much had one hand tied behind our back the whole game.

For the majority of the season, a third of the team was unavailable. Yesterday it was half; a very tough season.

The next game vs. Ball State has been postponed. The COVID rules say that you need to have six healthy scholarship players to play. We noted earlier that it wouldn't take many COVID positives to meet the threshold. I am not even sure if we have COVID issues. We might not have six uninjured players al all. If that is true it is an odd loophole in the COVID rules that nobody expected and in a normal year we would have had to find some walk-ons or forfeit. I think back in a 5 win season in the late 90s that the men's team played a game with only 4 or 5 scholarship players healthy.

Ohio lost at home today to Western Michigan, 80-73. Combined with Kent State and Northern Illinois wins, the loss drops the Bobcats into ninth place in the MAC and out of the tournament. It's going to be a tough climb to get back into the race for Cleveland, as Ohio is 0-2 against both WMU and NIU, two of the teams just above them in the standings.

Kind of a familiar story today - the Bobcats can't hit threes (4-22), and they can't stop them either (14-32). They were up by 2 with just over 5 minutes to play, but were outscored 15-6 to close the game.

At least Cece Hooks' injury does not appear to be as bad as it could have been. She did not play today, and sported a nasty gash above her right eye that Jake Hromada said took a lot of stitches to close. But there was no mention of any fractures or concussion, so perhaps she will be back sooner rather than later. Ohio has a quick turnaround before the next game against Eastern Michigan on Monday. That may already be a must-win game, as the Eagles are one of the teams below Ohio in the standings.

Hooks is back tonight and now Johnson is out.

Bobcats pulled away late to beat Eastern Michigan 66-53. The Eagles are not good, so it was maybe what Ohio needed with Johnson out. Apparently they are hopeful she'll be back Wednesday against Toledo. They'll probably need her playing well to have a chance in that one. Felder had a career-high 20 tonight, Burris 18 and Hooks only 12 in her first game back after missing with the bad cut to her forehead. But she had 10 assists and seven rebounds.

Ohio looked from start to finish like they were dialed in and knew exactly what they wanted to do, especially defensively. High confidence, energy, and communication. Even though EMU was a win, they took a significant step up mentally against Toledo. Other than the couple minutes after the Toledo buzzer beater to take the lead, where it seemed to be nothing but Erica running around and putting up tough shots in traffic, the offense was good, especially with her, Gabby, and Hooks. Great to have all three on the floor at once. Boy, it would be nice to have had about four of those points left at the free throw line by Hooks. Refs...well, they made post defense by Ohio illegal for most of the game. Apparently they don't like Kate Dennis, who I thought did a really nice job on some much bigger girls. I don't know what else she was supposed to do! But in spite of all that, Ohio is down one; two seconds left. Ref anticipates a foul that never happens, right as Toledo throws away the inbounds pass. That's a killer. Overall, if Ohio can keep their health and their heads up, they can beat anyone in Cleveland; if they can just get there...and get some rebounds! (I get that there's not a lot of help beyond Gabby but there were way too many second chance shots all night for Toledo that were winnable rebounds.)

I am sure they would have loved to have had the win, but one can hardly blame a one-possession failure to sweep an otherwise undefeated in-conference foe for that.

Toledo was just as cold, if not colder, shooting in the first half. They were in the teens from 3 and maybe 32% from the field. To see them only down 11 after being that cold, it only made sense that they would close the gap. The real missed opportunity was about four too many missed Ohio free throws, and maybe a missed easy bucket or two, in the first half that would have made the lead pretty much insurmountable.

I'm not expecting this team to make it to Cleveland, given their remaining schedule. And that's shocking, to me.

They are up 15 at BG with 4 minutes left. That would be a very helpful win as it would put them ahead of Bowling Green in the standings.

Bowling Green won the MAC regular season with a very, very young team in what was a big surprise. They will fall in to a tie for 8th place

Ohio finished third last year in a injury plagued year and lost to CMU in an epic MAC semi-final. We were the favorite this season but have ran into even more serious injury issues than last year. A win makes us 7th for the time being.

CMU was maybe the most dominant program in tha MAC over the past decade with several MAC and MAC tournament titles and several NCAA wins including a Sweet 16. They are in last place and won't make the MAC tournament.

Ohio and BG were picked 1st and second. The fact that one of them might miss just tells you about conference parity.