Recap: Bobcats Crush Central Michigan

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, right? Well on Saturday afternoon, the Ohio Bobcats had three-pointers. And a lot of them.

The Bobcats hit 11 three-pointers and blew out Central Michigan 68-42 at the Convocation Center, notching their sixth straight win.

Walter Offutt led the Bobcats with 17 points, including four second-half threes to blow the game open. After five straight games that were decided by eight points or less, Ohio (19-4, 7-2) was able to relax down the stretch and rest their starters.

"I felt really good about our effort and attitude over the course of 40 minutes," said Ohio coach John Groce after the win. Groce had been searching for his team to play a complete game for the past few weeks, and the team seemed to find that consistency today.

It was another strong performance defensively for the Bobcats, holding the Chippewas to a miserable 28.8 percent from the field. It was the fourth straight game Ohio held its opponent to under 38 percent shooting.

"I think we're getting better defending. Our defense has continued to get better each game," said Offutt after the game.

The junior teamed with sophomore Ricardo Johnson to limit CMU's Trey Zeigler, the third leading scorer in the conference, to just 10 points.

The first half was not particularly pretty for the Bobcats as the guards fell victim to chucking-up-threes syndrome. Ohio shot a whopping 20 three-point tries in the first half, making only four of them. But thanks to an anemic CMU offensive attack, the poor shooting percentage didn't manage to hurt Ohio.

They started connecting on their threes after halftime, hitting 7 of 10 three-pointers in the second half.

D.J. Cooper bounced back from a four-point effort Wednesday against Northern Illinois and filled the stat sheet with nine points, seven rebounds and seven assists. He missed some makeable shots, but played in control and made some jaw dropping passes.

But more importantly, he controlled the tempo after the sporadic start.

It was a nice win for the Bobcats, but also one that should be kept in context.

Central Michigan was bad. Not bad like a Hallmark movie. It was more like a Hallmark movie with the cast of "Jersey Shore" as the principal actors and written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan kind of bad. They couldn't hit an open three, turned the ball over 14 times, dished out just six assists, and when the game had been decided, resorted to hacking Ohio players seemingly every time they attacked the rim.

Ohio looks to carry the momentum from Saturday's win into this week's slate of road games at Toledo and at Eastern Michigan.