The Ashland University men’s basketball team maintained their hold on first place in the GLIAC South Division with an 80-61 win over Malone at Kates Gymnasium on Saturday. 

The Eagles, 11-5 overall and 5-5 in the GLIAC, remained on top for the entire game, first taking the lead minutes into it and maintaining it for the duration. Ashland Coach John Ellenwood was pleased with the win after previously suffering two consecutive losses against Walsh and Michigan Tech.

“We bounce back well. I thought we rebounded the ball a lot better today, and defensively we had a better focus,” Ellenwood said. “I was happy with our defensive effort today, passing the ball, and sharing it.”

Indeed the Eagles excelled in their passing techniques throughout the game. But what remained increasingly impressive was the physical gameplay during Ashland’s win over the Pioneers.

“Malone is a young team, but they have had some good success in this league as a young team,” Ellenwood said.

Among Malone’s younger team is freshman guard Ben Haraway, who previously put up 27 points when Malone toppled Lake Erie College on Thursday. Fortunately for Ellenwood, his team was prepared defensively for Haraway.

“Ben is an excellent player. We have to be concerned about him. If the vote was today, he would probably be the newcomer of the year in the conference—I would vote for him for that,” Ellenwood said.

Prepared for Haraway’s potential success was Ashland senior point guard DaWuan Thomas who had 16 points.

“I play hard,” Thomas said. “I knew they had a pretty good freshman point guard, so I wanted to come out being aggressive, for sure.”

But in addition to Thomas’s points, it was his consistent physical effort throughout the game that led to the Eagles success. With 10 minutes left in the first half, Thomas threw himself into the home-side bleachers of Kates Gymnasium in order to save the ball. He repeated this plight again only three minutes into the second half—his save then yielding a lay-up from sophomore forward Wendell Davis.

“As one of the leaders of this team I just wanted to show the guys that I care,” Thomas said. “We had a tough loss on Thursday. So I just wanted to come out there in first place.”

“We feed off of our point guard [Thomas],” Ellenwood said. “We need to have effort out of him because everyone else is going to feed off of him. There were a couple of plays where there was a loose ball going out of bounds, and we did a very good job of saving it and getting some points out of it. I thought we did an excellent job of feeding off of his effort.”

The Eagles will host Findlay on Thursday, when they hope to continue their success.