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UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS — A second-half Wilmington College rally came up short as the Quakers fell to John Carroll, 82-77, in a battle for sole possession of first place in the Ohio Athletic Conference Saturday afternoon.

The loss leaves Wilmington at 10-4 in the OAC, 15-6 overall. John Carroll moves to 11-3 in the conference, 15-5 for the season.

“I know we have a busload of very dejected kids,” Wilmington head coach K.C. Hunt said. “They played their hearts out. We just made too many silly mistakes, where we just weren’t mentally tough enough or strong enough with the ball, and it really cost us in the end.”

Wilmington played from behind most of the day as John Carroll slowly built a first-half lead that reached 30-20 at 6:46. At the break, the Blue Streaks were up, 46-35.

The Quakers went down by 13 early in the second before mounting a comeback. Seven different players scored as Wilmington outscored John Carroll, 24-14. When R. J. Brown (Circleville) drained a pair of free throws at 12:11, the Blue Streaks' lead had been reduced to 62-59.

Brown scored again at 5:58 to tie the game at 65, and Brandon Rogers (Xenia) pulled Wilmington even at 72 with a 3-point play at 3:31.

The hump, however, is something the Quakers never got over as John Carroll scored four straight points and never relinquished the lead again.

Ledford led the Quakers with 17 points. Rogers scored 14 and pulled down game-high seven rebounds. Tyler White (Cincinnati/Colerain) added 13 points and Antonio Bowman (Columbus/Whetstone) scored 12.

Wilmington turned the ball over 23 times to John Carroll’s 15, but nearly every other stat line leaned toward the Quakers, who hit 33 of 59 shots from the field.

“We shot 56 percent from the field and out-rebounded them by eight — if you would have given me those statistics before the game, I would have said we’re going to win,” Hunt said. “Obviously, there’s a heckuva lot more to it. We didn’t take care of the ball and we had some critical defensive breakdowns. We didn’t play well enough to win.”

The Quakers will travel to Ada to face Ohio Northern 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

“The guys are disappointed right now, but they realize that there is a lot of season left,” Hunt said. “Hopefully, they are going to put themselves back into a situation where they get to play in another game of this magnitude. I think we learned a lot from this game on how hard you have to prepare and how hard you have to play to play in a championship-level type game. I really thought we did that in the second half. We just didn’t put two halves together.”