Toledo Rockets vs. Cleveland State Vikings men's basketball recap: Toledo coasts to 76-65 win at home

After the 3,000 mile trip back to Toledo, the Rockets didn’t show any signs of jet lag Wednesday evening in Savage Arena.

Toledo (5-2) handled intrastate foe Cleveland State (2-5) with relative ease and coasted to a 76-65 victory. The Rockets took a 13-point advantage into the half, leading 36-23 after shooting roughly 52 percent from the field and 40 percent from three. After the break, Toledo can out strong and built their lead up to 20 during the second half which would eventually be cut down to 10 by CSU, but the Vikings never got any closer.

Toledo was led by Nathan Boothe who finished tied for the game high with 17 points. He also contributed 8 rebounds and 5 assists. Junior guard Jonathan Williams matched Boothe with 17 points on 6 of 10 shooting.

Cleveland State did a much better job defensively in the second half, even though the box score may say otherwise. The Vikings held Toledo without a field goal for a little over eight minutes in the second half starting around the 16:30 mark, but, unfortunately for CSU, Toledo was able to capitalize on free throws during that time as the Rockets made 10 of them during that stretch.

Toledo finished the game with 36 free throw attempts, connecting on 26 of them. This effort doubled Cleveland State’s 13 for 18 at the charity stripe. CSU was led by senior forward Vinny Zollo, who came in averaging around six points per contest, with 14 points and 5 rebounds. Those 14 points also matched a career high, so good on ya Vinny! Leading the Vikings in scoring, however, was freshman Rob Edwards with 15 points, however seven of those came from the free throw line as Edwards was a dismal 3 of 12 from the floor.

Cleveland State is back in action on Saturday, December 5^th at home against another MAC team, Kent State.

Toledo, though, will be back on the road, this time to Green Bay (4-3) on December 6th. As you may recall, Green Bay is where current Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk was previously head honcho for eight years.