Five Wabash players scored in double figures to lead the Little Giants to an 86-50 road win at Oberlin to open the 2019 portion of the season and improve to 12-1 overall and 6-0 in the North Coast Athletic Conference.
 
The 6-0 start to the conference portion of the schedule matches the 6-0 beginning posted by the 1999-2000 team in Wabash's first season in the NCAC. That Little Giant team finished 20-7 overall with a 13-3 record in NCAC games.
 
Wabash nearly led start to finish, jumping out to a 2-0 lead on a shot in the lane by Harrison Hallstrom. The junior post player scored 14 points overall in 21 minutes of action and nearly posted a double-double by grabbing a team-high nine rebounds. Oberlin (7-5, 3-2 NCAC) answered with a basket by Eli Silverman-Lloyd for his only made shot of the game. The Little Giants limited Silverman-Lloyd, the leading scorer entering the contest for the Yeomen with a 14.7 points-per-game average, to three total points.
 
Jack Davidson returned the lead to Wabash by connecting on three free throws after Oberlin had taken a 4-2 advantage. Davidson led the Little Giants with 21 points over the course of 30 minutes of playing time with 16 points coming in the first half.
 
Wabash needed strong play from its bench with starters Connor Rotterman and Ben Stachowski, as well as key reserve Colten Garland, unavailable Saturday due to injuries. Tyler Watson and Kellen Schreiber were inserted into the starting lineup, with each player scoring ten points in the game. The Little Giants got big games from the remainder of the bench, led a career-best 12 points from Matt Chinn with a 4-for-4 effort from behind the three-point arc. The bench accounted for 28 points overall in the victory. Freshman Jayden Edwards scored five points and grabbed a career-high seven rebounds in a season-best 16 minutes of playing time.
 
"Today's game was really rewarding," Wabash head coach Kyle Brumett said. "It was not just rewarding for the coaching staff, but also for the players. We talk a lot about our depth. We've worked hard to build that depth and to try to put the right recruiting classes together. I feel like this team fits really well together. When someone gets thrown into an opportunity as a player, as a coach you hope they will respond. It's great team building for us to see those guys really take advantage of those opportunities.
 
"We've gotten off to a great start this year. People are gunning for us. They're starting to look at us differently than they have in the past and maybe differently than they thought they were going to when the season began. We really are going to need people to step up and be able to take other teams' best shots. I thought the guys that slid into the lineup really allowed us to get off to a good start today."
 
The Little Giants shot a blistering 16-of-26 for 61.5 percent from the field in the first half while holding Oberlin to 11-of-31 from the field for 35 percent and 1-of-12 from three-point range to push Wabash to a 42-27 halftime lead. The Little Giants nearly doubled the Yeomen's scoring in the second half at 44-23 by allowing Oberlin only five baskets out of 28 shot attempts for 17.9 percent shooting. Oberlin finished 16-of-59 from the field for the game for 27 percent and made only 1-of-23 three-pointers (4.3 percent).
 
"Part of having some experience is having guys who have played through some low points," Brumett said. "We've lost to Oberlin in the past and Silverman-Lloyd has been the big gun. We've lost to them in the past and Andre Campbell has had a great game. Joshua Freidkin and Christian Fioretti have played well against us in the past. We have been good this year in part because of our defense. That's something that we take pride in and are really focused on going into each and every game. That was a challenge to our guys defensively.
 
"We were somewhat preparing for today to be a little bit more of a low-scoring game, especially when we realized we would be without some of our guys. We're starting to find things that are building our team's identity. We've talked a lot since the loss to Wilmington that our defense has to travel better. We've really focused on that in practice. We've really gotten after each other. I think it's helped our defense by getting back to some of the practice details that we had worked on so hard in the preseason but have a hard time doing once you start playing a lot of games. I think we reaped the benefit of that today."
 
Wabash, in contrast, shot 56.9 percent from the field for the game while connecting on 9-of-14 three-point shots for 64 percent. The Little Giant dominated the point by scoring 44 of their 86 points in the lane. Wabash outrebounded the Yeomen 41-32.
 
Fioretti led Oberlin in scoring with 14 points. He was held to four points in the second half after tallying ten in the opening period.
 
Saturday's victory puts Wabash alone atop the NCAC standings with a one-game lead over Wooster (10-3, 5-1 NCAC) and Wittenberg (11-2, 5-1 NCAC). Wabash will face Wittenberg at home on Wednesday in a 7 p.m. tip at Chadwick Court.