MUNCIE, Ind. – One game after giving up 82 points to Akron, Ohio clamped down on defense and rolled to a 69-42 victory against Ball State at Worthen Arena on Wednesday night.

The Bobcats (16-6, 7-1 Mid-American Conference) forced 22 turnovers, including 15 in the first half, while holding the Cardinals to 26.5 percent shooting. Ohio opened up a 34-14 lead by halftime and rolled from there.

Offensively, Walter Offutt led the way with 17 points on 6-of-9 shooting. T.J. Hall, starting in place of Ivo Baltic, had 10 points. D.J. Cooper had only four points, but took only three shots, dished out five assists and matched Offutt with a team-leading four steals.

Jauwan Scaife had 18 points to lead the Cardinals, but none of his teammates scored more than six.

“When you guard the way we guarded in the first half, it’s five guys,” Ohio coach Jim Christian said..” … We played really well defensively. It was probably as well as we’ve played defensively in a while.”

Ohio set the tone early. The Cardinals committed four turnovers before they scored a field goal and the Bobcats took a 7-1 lead before a Matt Kamieniecki dunk finally gave Ball Stat its first make from the floor, but the Cardinals (8-13, 2-7 MAC) did not score again until nearly seven minutes into the game and they had turned it over three more times.

In the meantime, T.J. Hall converted a three-point play and Offutt knocked down back-to-back triples to give Ohio a commanding 16-3 advantage in the first six minutes.

“It was a disappointing performance for us to say the least,” Ball State coach Billy Taylor said. “These guys have worked so hard on the floor in practice and to see us come out and not perform is tough to swallow. We know we’ve got guys that are a lot better in the locker room and capable of much more and we just didn’t get it done. The first five to eight minutes set a tone and we could not recover from it.”

Scaife hit a 3-pointer that got the Cardinals within 11 with six minutes left in the half, but again, the offense went cold, scoring only one more point.

Offutt stuck again from deep and then found Jon Smith in the post for a layup, and after a Bo Calhoun free throw for Ball State, Ohio got a Hall 3-pointer and Smith layup to take a 20-point lead into the break.

“We double (Majok) Majok in the post and we had to put some pressure on their guards to force them out,” Christian said. “… We were able to shoot some gaps and get some steals. Then you have to play good one-on-one defense, which we had not been doing, but we did tonight.”

With a Reggie Keely putback and two straight layups by Offutt off of turnovers to start the second half, Ohio led 40-14.

The Bobcats substituted fairly freely the rest of the way and reached their biggest lead of 29 with seven minutes remaining on a pair of Offutt free throws. Ohio’s lead was never less than 19 points after halftime.

“They run a lot of ball screens, a lot of staggered screens,” Offutt said. “We did a good job of coming off the ball. … We did a good job of contesting their shots. … We had a good team effort.”

It was not Ohio’s best offensive performance, but it did not have to be. The Bobcats shot 44.1 percent, including 7 of 21 shots from beyond the arc, and had 14 turnovers. They were 10 of 14 at the foul line. But the Bobcats outscored the Cardinals, 26-9, on second-chance points.

Playing 22 minutes, Baltic had his best game in a while with eight points and eight rebounds. Keely had nine points and seven boards in 19 minutes and Smith finished with six points and four blocks.

“You just can’t turn the ball over as much as we did in the first half,” Taylor said. “… We’ve got to be able to solve that problem because it’s putting too much pressure on our half-court defense. … They scored a lot of baskets in the open floor. Take that away, we held them to a pretty low percentage.”

Ball State’s Jesse Berry was 1 of 10, Marcus Posey made just 1 of 6 attempts and Majok connected on just 1 of 4 shots and 2 of 7 free throws. Even Scaife did not have a good shooting night, making 5 of 13 attempts.

Kamieniecki and Majok each had nine rebounds for Ball State.

“We really stuck to our game plan,” Christian said. “What we set out to do, we did, and we were happy with how we finished out the game.”

After four straight road games, Ohio finally returns home to host Bowling Green at 2 p.m. Saturday at The Convo.