ATHENS, Ohio – Ivo Baltic eclipsed his previous career-high in the first half and finished with 31 points to lead Ohio to an 80-73 victory against Northern Illinois on Saturday at The Convo.

The nation’s second-leading scorer Xavier Silas finished with 25 points for the Huskies, but he was outdone by the Bobcats’ sophomore forward, who came in averaging just 8.7 points per game, but was 12 of 20 from the field and added nine rebounds.

“Just from the start, it’s definitely confidence,” Baltic said. “Just taking shot after shot I felt like it was just going in.”

DeVaughn Washington had 16 points and six rebounds as Ohio (11-12, 4-5 Mid-American Conference) dominated play in the paint with 38 points to 16 for Northern Illinois. D.J. Cooper had 13 points, seven assists and six rebounds.

“We just didn’t have anybody with size,” Northern Illinois coach Ricardo Patton said. “Not that defensively (Nate Rucker, who left early with an injury) would have been a great defensive stopper but at least we would have had a better post player to throw the ball inside on our end of the floor.”

Antone Christian had a career-high 17 points for the Huskies (7-14, 3-6 MAC). Tim Toler had a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds.

Northern Illinois held its only lead by scoring the game’s opening basket. The Huskies trailed 12-10 when Ivo Baltic had five points on a 7-0 run to put the Bobcats on top by nine.

After Northern Illinois cut its deficit to 23-21, Ohio scored eight straight to go up by 10, and the Bobcats ended up taking a 39-30 lead into halftime.

A Cooper steal led to a Washington layup midway through the second half, giving Ohio a 14-point-lead, and after a Silas 3-pointer, Washington scored back-to-back layups for a 67-52 advantage.

The Huskies went on a 13-3 run, though, with Silas scoring 10 in that span of less than four minutes.

Baltic, though, hit a jumper, and Washington made two free throws to give Ohio breathing room again. From there, Northern Illinois got no closer than seven.

The Bobcats had a season-low eight turnovers, finished with 13 offensive rebounds and shot 44.6 percent from the field. They did make just 1 of 8 3-pointers, though, but connected on 21 of 25 free throw tries.

Northern Illinois shot just 39.7 percent with 14 turnovers.

After giving up 91 points to Central Michigan, Ohio took a good step defensively.

“The last couple of days we’ve been back from Central Michigan we have really focused in on our defense,” Ohio coach John Groce said. “We held them to 40 percent from the field for the game, which is the first time we’ve done that in several games. Obviously in the first half I thought we defended at a really high level. In the second half we were up and down with it a little bit but we improved a great deal over the last three days defensively.”

Normally a high-scoring team, Northern Illinois had only 10 points in the first 12 minutes.

The Bobcats have a chance to get back to .500 both overall and in the MAC at 7 p.m. Wednesday when they host last-place Toledo.