The Wabash College basketball team played its second top-25 ranked basketball team in four days Wednesday evening when it faced 19-ranked Ohio Wesleyan University. The Little Giants lost the North Coast Athletic Conference contest 81-74.
 
Wabash (2-3, 1-1 NCAC) took an early lead when it defeated 25th-ranked Wooster on the road Saturday. The Little Giants were unable to use their home court advantage as the start of Wednesday's game against OWU (6-1, 2-0 NCAC). Wabash missed its first nine shots to go scoreless over the opening five minutes before Logan White hit a layup. Despite the slow start the Little Giants only trailed 8-2.
 
Seth Clark drained back-to-back shots for Battling Bishops to stretch the OWU lead to 12 points, the largest lead of the first half. The Little Giants whittled the advantage down to three points on a Colten Garland three-pointer, 21-18 with 9:13 left in the opening period. OWU jumped back up by nine with six minutes remaining in the half. Wabash answered with an 11-4 run over the next three minutes to make it a 36-34 game in favor of OWU. The Bishops would maintain that lead to the closing seconds of the half before two-time NCAC Player of the Year Nate Axelrod drilled a three-pointer ahead of the halftime buzzer to give OWU the 43-37 lead at the break.
 
Ohio Wesleyan got off to a good start in the second half, as well. The Bishops scored the first points of the period to regain the 11-point lead before matching its largest lead of the game at 12 with 15:55 left to play, 56-44. OWU eventually led 61-50 with 12:31 remaining before Wabash mounted another rally.
 
Jack Davidson, the NCAC Player of the Week, connected on a three-point try and add a pair of free throws, along with two free throws from Alex Eberhard, over the span of a minute to trim the lead to 61-57. Davidson added another three-pointer at the 9:35 mark to make it a one-point game at 61-60.  Garland for another three-point shot to provide the first Wabash lead of the game at 63-61 with 9:35 left to play, capping a 13-0 run over the course of three minutes.
 
That lead would be short-lived. Clark answered with back-to-back baskets as part of a 17-point effort in the game. Axelrod stretched the advantage to five points with a three-point basket with 7:17 remaining. The senior finished with a game-high 21 points for OWU.
 
Wabash would tie the game at 72-72 with 5:01 left in the final period on another Garland triple. The Little Giants managed to score only once in the closing stretch of the game on a Harrison Hallstrom layup. OWU scored its final nine points over the final five minutes to secure the win and remain unbeaten in NCAC action.
 
Davidson finished with a game-high 22 points. Garland added 12 points. White recorded his first double-double of the season, scoring 10 points and grabbing 10 rebounds while coming off the bench. Connor Rotterman, who drew the defensive duties against Axelrod throughout most the game, scored ten points.
"Hopefully we'll learn a lot from this game," Wabash head coach Kyle Brumett said. "We had some freshmen make some great plays, and then we had some freshmen plays. Some of our older guys ought to look at the film. They really made some plays to keep us in it when we were down. I thought we were really good on the glass. We just needed to finish a few more plays off.
 
"Our team has talent. We've had some injuries here and there. The one thing about basketball is you have to play together to figure each other out. We don't have a ton of offensive rhythm. Right now we're scoring because we have good offensive players. But they're not playing together well enough yet. We gave up 81 to Ohio Wesleyan. They're averaging 92 points a game. There's some fools' gold in there. Eighty-one points is probably still too many but they're hard to guard."
 
Wabash continues NCAC play when it travels to Gambier, Ohio Saturday to play at Kenyon College at 3 p.m.