By Chris Schmidbauer, Sports Information Director
After a double digit win this past Wednesday over Sinclair, the Owens Express hit the road again and continued their winning ways, this time defeating the Hocking College Hawks 96-74.
The Express jumped out to a double digit lead early. Owens would go on a 17-5 run over the game's first seven minutes and they would push their lead to twenty points with 8:31 to play in the opening half. The team would take their lead even further to 30 points with just 1:21 to play in the first half, and they would head to the locker room up 51-24.
The Express would be outscored in the second half by five points, but the first half dominance was more than enough to give the Express their 16th win of the season.
Marquevious Wilson continued his torrid pace on the offensive end of the floor. He shot 10-12 from the floor and 6-8 from three for 27 points, which led all scorers in the game. Over his last two games, Wilson is 19-23 from the floor, which is 83% shooting. For the season, he is shooting near 50%, and he is 42.9% from three. The Lima native has also scored in double figures in every game he's played in, except for one so far this season.
Three other players scored in double figures. The twin towers down low of Julian Egbo and Justin Sylver had another impactful game. Sylver finished with 13 points on 4-7 shooting and he even knocked down a three in the game against the Hawks. For his part, Egbo scored 11 points on 5-9 shooting and a team high six rebounds on the afternoon. Finally, freshman Gabe Simpson would finish with 10 points and five rebounds for the contest.
Sophomore Jamiri Bennett had a solid outing too. He finished with nine points on a perfect 3-3 from beyond the arc.
As a team, the Express were scorching offensively. They were 39-64 from the floor which is good enough for 60.9%. They shot above 50% (11-21) from three as well. Hocking would shoot 46.9% from the field and just 27.3% from three.
Owens now moves to 16-7 overall and 10-2 in the OCCAC, which is just a half game behind conference leader Cuyahoga. Hocking fell to 11-14 overall and 3-9 in the OCCAC.
The Express also have now won their ninth game in a row. This is the longest winning streak of the season. Since the beginning of 2018, Owens has lost just once, which was back on January 6 to Vincennes University by a final of 87-60. During the streak, Owens is averaging 88 points per game and only have allowed an average of 74 points per game during those contests. This is also the program's longest winning streak since the 2005-2006 season when the Express won 14 games in a row. Since then several teams have won eight, but this group is the first one to win nine in a row in 12 season of men's basketball at Owens.
The Express will next be at home on Valentine's Day, on Wednesday February 14. They will host the Edison Chargers, who are 15-7 overall but just 3-6 in the conference, at 7:30 PM from the SHAC.