ADA – John Carroll men’s basketball coach Mike Moran effectively summed up his team in one quick sentence after an 86-68 win at Ohio Northern on Saturday afternoon.
“We don’t get many shot clock violations,” the longtime John Carroll coach said.
John Carroll (7-0, 2-0 Ohio Athletic Conference) came into Saturday’s game averaging 99.7 points a game.
It didn’t quite match that pace in its win over Ohio Northern (4-3, 1-1 OAC), but it didn’t have to do that after a huge first half.
The Blue Streaks led 49-30 at halftime and were up by as many as 27 points late in the first half after going on a 30-5 run in a span of 8 ½ minutes after Ohio Northern had pulled to within two points, 17-15.
“It felt like about 60-5,” ONU coach Kevin Byrne said. “They were able to turn us over, they were hitting shots. Three timeouts later and anything I could think of, we were kind of out of it.”
In the first half, John Carroll hit five 3-pointers, pulled down 31 rebounds – 10 of them on the offensive end – and pressured Ohio Northern into 12 turnovers.
Moran said, “We made a few shots. That kind of sparked us. We made a few perimeter shots and that kind of gave us some momentum. That gets you going, it gets the adrenaline going.”
Simon Kucharewicz (18 points, 8 rebounds), point guard David Linane (15 points, 6 assists) and John Cirillo (10 points) led 10 John Carroll players who got into the scoring column.
Konnor Baker lead ONU with 16 points. Aaron Thress had 15 points and seven rebounds and Devon Allen scored 12 points.
Ohio Northern never led after falling behind 6-0 to start the game and the final margin of 18 points was as close as it got after John Carroll broke the game open late in the first half.
The Polar Bears’ 68 points were a season low, by one point, and their 31 percent shooting on field goals was also a season low.
“They can test you in a lot of ways. They’re big, they’re fast. Their point guard is very good, so you have to take care of the ball, which we’ve been very good at this year until today,” Byrne said.
“We needed to shoot the ball a little better. In the second half, we at least battled. In the first half, we got killed on the boards. We weren’t just quite tough enough. They were the tougher team today, they were the better team. They got rolling on us,” he said.
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