Napier's late basket caps rally, leads Men's Basketball to 62-61 victory over Wilmington
By Tim Glon
ADA — Sophomore C.J. Napier (Miamsburg/Bishop Fenwick) scored with 39 seconds left to lift the Ohio Northern men's basketball team to a 62-61 victory over Wilmington on Saturday night at the ONU Sports Center.
The Polar Bears (2-0 overall, 2-0 Ohio Athletic Conference) completed the back-to-back sweep of Wilmington (0-2, 0-2) after winning 95-86 on Friday night.
Napier scored a team-high 16 points as ONU rallied from a 10-point second half deficit.
WC led 52-42 with 8:34 left, but ONU chipped away and took its first lead since the 7:51 mark of the first half when Napier scored his basket with 39 seconds left.
Ohio Northern's defense forced a 30-second shot clock violation on Wilmington's ensuing possession and the Quakers sent Napier to the foul line with 7.7 seconds to go.
Napier missed the front end of the one-and-one, but ONU had five fouls to give and began to foul as WC advanced the ball up the court.
Northern appeared to foul Jeffery Mansfield outside the 3-point arc with two seconds left, but no foul was called. Mansfield drove all the way to the rim but his layup at the buzzer came up just short and ONU survived for the win.
"We played with tired legs tonight," ONU head coach Rich Bensman said. "We need to get deeper into our bench with these back-to-back games. I'm very proud of the way we kept battling though. Trailing by 10 with eight minutes to go is a time when we could have folded, but our guys kept playing hard. We made some plays at the end of the game and got a win over a very talented team."
Junior Brandon Waugh (Columbus/Northland) also scored in double figures for the Polar Bears with 12 points.
His 3-pointer with 2:09 to play got ONU within 59-58 and Napier followed with a nice basket inside at the 1:18 mark to make it 61-60.
Mansfield led the Quakers with 22 points.
ONU made 24-of-59 field goals for 40.7 percent and was 5-15 from 3-point range for 33.3 percent. WC was 26-of-59 from the floor for 44.1 percent and made 9-of-24 three-pointers for 37.5 percent.
Wilmington won the rebounding battle by a 37-35 margin.
The polar Bears will return to action next weekend with a pair of games against Otterbein. ONU will host OU on Friday at 7 pm and will play at OU on Saturday at 6 pm.
