KENT – Shereef Mitchell scored 25 points but his 3-pointer at the buzzer was off the mark, and Kent State held on for a 76-75 victory against Ohio on Friday night at the MAC Center.

In a back-and-forth game throughout, the Golden Flashes (17-6, 7-5 Mid-American Conference) went ahead for good, 71-70, on Cian Medley’s three-point play with 1:09 remaining. Delrecco Gillespie added a free throw a short time later, and Cli’ron Hornbeak came up with a steal and dunk to put Kent State ahead by four with 22 seconds left.

Vic Searls put back a missed AJ Clayton 3-pointer, and after two Jalen Sullinger free throws with 10 seconds go to, Mitchell drained a trey to make it a one-point game with five seconds to go. Kent State threw away the inbounds pass, giving Ohio (13-12, 7-5 MAC) a final shot that Mitchell could not convert.

Mitchell went 9 of 14 overall, including 4 of 6 from 3-point range, and added four steals. Jackson Paveletzke and Elmore James both had 12 points for the Bobcats.

Medley nearly matched Mitchell, finishing with 24 points, and he got a lot of help from Sullinger, who scored 18 points. Both VonCameron Davis and Jamal Sumlin had 10 points.

Down 44-40 at halftime, Ohio scored the first five points of the second half to take a lead, and after the teams traded leads, Kent State scored six points in a row to go up five. That was followed by a seven-point Bobcats run, with a Searls layup making it 54-52 with 11:47 left.

From there, neither team led by more than two until an Elmore James 3-pointer gave Ohio a 70-66 lead with 2:10 to go. Sumlin came right back with a layup ahead of Medley’s go-ahead three-point play.

Ohio had a hot shooting start that including 3-pointers by AJ Brown, Clayton and Mitchell and took an 11-3 lead. A Mitchell triple made it 22-12 at the 13:24 mark in the first half. Paveletzke gave the Bobcats the biggest lead of the game, 29-18, with a four-point play.

The Golden Flashes scored the next seven points to get back in it, and they later had an 8-0 run, going up 33-31 on a Medley 3-pointer. Later, with the game tied at 40, a bucket by Sumlin and free throws by Sullinger gave them a four-point halftime lead.

Brown scored nine points, with Searls scoring seven and adding six rebounds. Clayton and Elijah Elliott both had five points.

Ohio shot 61.5% in the first half and 51.9% for the game, better than Kent State, which was 53.3% in the first half and 46.3% overall. The difference was the Golden Flashes going 20 of 23 at the foul line, compared to the Bobcats finishing 10 of 13. Kent State had an 11-3 advantage in offensive rebounds.

The Bobcats try to bounce back with a visit from Central Michigan at 7 p.m. Tuesday at The Convo.