OBERLIN, Ohio (December 7, 2022) – The Denison University men's basketball team put together a strong defensive effort from start to finish to earn its first North Coast Athletic Conference win of the 2022-23 season with a 56-41 win on the road over Oberlin College on Wednesday night.

This one was all about the solid defensive effort by the Big Red against an Oberlin team that came in averaging nearly 70 points per game and put up a hard-fought two-point loss (80-78) at then No. 25-ranked Wabash College last Saturday.

The game started with a first half that featured one giant run for each team as down 5-0 to start the game, back-to-back 3-pointers by Emmett Burnside sparked an 18-0 Denison run that ended with back-to-back 3-pointers by Dre Rodgers and Chase Ouellette to make it 18-5 Big Red nine and a half minutes into the game.

Then after a layup by Burnside made it 22-7 Big Red with 7:14 left in the first half, Oberlin went on its run and scored 11 straight points to get back into it down 22-18 with 2:42 to go until halftime.

The second half then started with eight straight points by Ricky Radtke over the first five minutes of the period, and then back-to-back layups by Tyler Miller made it a 12-0 start to the half in all for Denison, which doubled up the Yeomen at 40-20 seven minutes into the period.

The closest Oberlin got from there was to within eight at 49-41 after back-to-back 3-pointers capped an 8-0 Yeomen run with just over three minutes left to play, but that would somehow be the last field goal of the game as the two teams combined to miss eight shots and three free throws in a row until the final minute when Darren Rubin went 2-for-2 from the line to get it back to a 10-point game at 51-41.

In the end, Oberlin was held to 27.9 percent shooting overall and 17.9 percent shooting from three for the game while Denison picked up the win despite shooting 0-for-7 from three in the second half and 4-for-25 (16 percent) from long range overall.

Denison was led by Miller with 11 points while Radtke and Burnside both finished with 10 and Rubin added nine.

With what was its fifth straight win against Oberlin, Denison improved to 4-4 overall and 1-1 in the NCAC while Oberlin dropped to 3-6 and 0-2. Three of the previous four wins for the Big Red over the Yeomen came by a margin of five points or less, including an 80-76 double overtime win on the road last season in the most recent matchup between the two teams.

Next up, Denison will return home to host Kalamazoo College in nonconference action beginning at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, December 14, inside Livingston Gymnasium before heading into the holiday break.