Gehle's double-double leads MHoops to up-tempo 101-93 win over B-W

Dec. 8, 2007

By Zach Stipe

ADA — Senior Kyle Gehle had career-highs in points and rebounds en route to recording his first-ever double-double as the Ohio Northern men’s basketball team defeated Baldwin-Wallace 101-93 in a back-and-forth up-tempo Ohio Athletic Conference game on Saturday at the ONU Sports Center.

Gehle scored 25 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and made all nine of his free throws for the Polar Bears, who improved to 5-3 overall and 2-1 in the OAC.

Junior Jake Cannan added 23 points and seven rebounds, while juniors Mitch Anderson and Loudan Hammersmith scored 12 and 11 points, respectively.

Kyle Brown had 20 points and 11 rebounds to lead the Yellow Jackets, who dropped to 3-4 and 1-1 in the OAC.

Brendan Schuler added 18 points and seven assists, and Tyler Sekerak had six steals for B-W.

A big difference in the game were the 22 points the Polar Bears scored off of the Yellow Jackets’ 13 turnovers.

Baldwin-Wallace forced 16 turnovers, but only scored seven points off of ONU’s mishaps.

Both teams were neck-and-neck until ONU started to pull away five minutes into the second half.

Junior Steve Young scored on a fastbreak layup to put the Polar Bears up 56-50 with 15:44 left in the game.

Another fastbreak layup, this time by sophomore Kyle Meyer, put ONU up eight at 12:19 and Northern went up 74-64 after freshman Sam Bastian hit a jumper in the lane.

Baldwin-Wallace fought back, though, as Schuler cut ONU’s lead to 89-84 by sinking a pair of free throws with three minutes remaining in the game.

Gehle answered with two free throw makes of his own and less than 30 seconds later Anderson put ONU back up by ten with his fourth 3-pointer of the game.

With 41 seconds left, Hammersmith put the exclamation point on ONU’s win with an emphatic one-handed dunk to give the Polar Bears a 99-88 lead.

In the first half, Northern went up 17-13 on a 3-pointer from Anderson, but B-W scored eight straight to go up 21-17 after Jeff Cannan buried a free throw at the 11:19 mark.

A free throw by Kyle Brown put the Yellow Jackets up 32-24 with 7:30 left before halftime and they remained up seven points after a jumper by Louis Tumblin at 3:02.

ONU answered with an 8-0 run to take a 44-43 lead into halftime though.

Back-to-back threes by Gehle and Kurtis Brown got ONU right back into the game and Gehle sank a pair of free throws 11 seconds before halftime.

ONU shot 53.8-percent from the field, while B-W made 49.2-percent of its field goal attempts. Both teams made eight 3-pointers, B-W on 22 attempts and ONU on 24 attempts. Northern held a 43-31 advantage on rebounds.

“Any conference win at any time is huge,” ONU head coach Jeff Coleman said. “We thought we could run against them. They were giving up a lot of points and we were able to capitalize. Its good we did because we were giving up a lot of points too.”

Ohio Northern returns to action on Wednesday as it hosts Otterbein at 7:30 p.m. at the ONU Sports Center in Ada.