MARIETTA, Ohio - Ban Johnson Arena, on the campus of Marietta College, will host a battle in Ohio Athletic Conference Men's Basketball Wednesday (Feb. 19) evening as the top team in the standings Mount Union does battle with the team that sits one game back in the standings, Marietta College.
Mount Union comes into the contest with a conference mark of 14-2. Marietta brings a 13-3 record into Wednesday's matchup. This makes the game for bragging rights, the conference championship and possibly the top seed in the OAC Tournament.
The first meeting of these two teams saw Mount Union hit a free throw with less than a second to go to secure a 73-72 win over the Pioneers, January 15 in Alliance.
Marietta comes into this contest winning eight of their last nine games, the only blemish in the stretch being a loss at Capital on February 12. Mount Union enters the game off a loss to Ohio Northern at home on February 15. The loss broke a seven-game winning streak for the Purple Raiders.
A win for the Pioneers, on Wednesday, will earn them a season split with the Purple Raiders and will vault Marietta into a first place tie in the OAC standings with Mount Union with one game remaining. If the two teams end the season in a tie, after all tiebreakers are exhausted, a coin-flip will determine who gets the top seed in the conference tournament and home-court advantage throughout the tournament.
To grab a win, Wednesday, the Pioneers will have to slow down the conference's top scoring offense, averaging 87.3 points per contest. The leader of that offense is sophomore guard Cody Dillon. Dillon averages over 13 points a game and shoots a conference best 49.6 percent from behind the 3-point arc. Dillon is followed by fellow sophomore Garrett Ruffin who averages 13 points a contest.
Dillon scored 15 in the first contest and Ruffin added nine points in the winning cause. The Purple Raiders were led by senior guard T.J. Gillespie who had 21 in the team's first matchup including the winning free throw.
Marietta brings the OAC's third-ranked offense into the game, scoring 82.3 points an outing. Sophomore
RaNeal Ewing (Westerville/Dublin Scioto) leads all Pioneers in scoring with just over 13 points a game. Junior
Andy Dollman (Vienna, W.Va./Parkersburg) ranks second on the team in scoring with 12.3 points per game. Ewing was held to 10 points in the first matchup. Dollman had a team-high 16 in the Jan. 15 battle.
Wednesday night's tip is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
Each team has one game remaining on their schedule after Wednesday night's contest. Marietta will host John Carroll University on and Mount Union will travel to Wilmington College. Both games slated to begin at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday (Feb. 22).
Fans can follow the Pioneers all season long at
pioneers.marietta.edu. You can also follow the Pioneers on Facebook at
facebook.com/MariettaCollege and @MariettaPioneer on Twitter.Â
