CLEVELAND – All season long, breaks did not go Ohio’s way, and that was the case again Thursday afternoon in the quarterfinals of the Mid-American Conference basketball tournament at Rocket Arena.

The injury-plagued Bobcats took the lead with four seconds left on a Jackson Paveletzke free throw, but the Rockets tied it and sent the game to overtime on a Sonny Wilson free throw with one second left, and they went on to win 95-90.

“They battled,” Ohio coach Jeff Boals said. “They competed.”

Paveletzke’s jumper gave Ohio (16-16) a 75-73 with 38 seconds left, but Isaiah Adams answered with seven seconds to go with the tying layup. Paveletzke quickly attacked and drew a foul but missed the second foul attempt.

After a Toledo (18-14) rebound and timeout, the ball ended up in the hands of Wilson, who was put up an off-balance shot as he stumbled against Ajay Sheldon sliding over to help on defense. Wilson tied the game with one free throw and then missed the second, leading to overtime.

Like much of the game, the extra minutes went back and forth, but the whistles continued to go the Rockets’ way. Sam Lewis converted a three-point play that resulted from Shareef Mitchell’s fifth foul and gave Toledo an 86-83 lead.

Paveletzke hit a clutch jumper to make it a one-point game with 19 seconds left, and after two free throws by Seth Hubbard made it 88-85, Paveletzke missed a long 3-point attempt to try to tie the game. Paveletzke nearly tracked down his miss along the sideline but stepped out of bounds, and then Hubbard made two more free throws with three seconds left to ice it.

Paveletzke was huge all day with 28 points and three assists. Mitchell and Vic Searls had 12 points each, while AJ Clayton scored 10 points.

“I was just out there playing really,” Paveletzke said “I wasn’t thinking too much. It didn’t really matter who was in front of me. I was just out there taking what the defense was giving me and trying to get the win.”

Adams matched Paveletzke for most of the game, scoring 26 points before he fouled out, and Lewis stepped up late and finished with 21 points and four blocks. Wilson (15 points, 13 rebounds) and Javon Simmons (10 points, 11 rebounds) both had double-doubles, while Hubbard scored 12 points off the bench.

The No. 4 seed Rockets advance to the semifinals of the tournament to take on No. 1 seed Akron. The Zips rolled past Bowling Green in their quarterfinal.

Toledo led 39-35 at halftime and scored the opening bucket of the second half. It led by five when Searls scored five straight points to tie it at 45. Paveletzke converted a three-point play to give Ohio its first lead of the second half, 50-49, with 12:20 remaining.

From there, the game was back and forth. The Bobcats made a push, going up 69-65 on Searls free throws with 5:11 left and then 71-66 on a Paveletzke layup with three minutes remaining.

Six straight Toledo free throws moved it on front, but Clayton answered with a post-up jumper off the backboard. Adams split two free throws with 1:02 left to tie the game before Paveletzke’s jumper put Ohio on top.

Neither team led by more than three points until the Rockets went on a 7-0 run to go up 24-17 in the middle of the first half. Their biggest lead was 27-19 on a Jaylan Ouwinga free throw at the 9:25 mark.

In his first game back from an injury that caused him to miss nearly two months, scored a three-point play that got the Bobcats to within two, but a Wilson jumper made it a four-point game at halftime.

In 21 minutes, Hadaway had seven points and eight rebounds, but Ohio still was without AJ Brown, who missed the final three games of the season, all of them losses. The last two were to Toledo, which won all three matchups this year.

Injuries were a problem all season long. Mitchell missed eight games early in the year, and Clayton was out for four in the middle of the season. Elmore James missed three games for undisclosed reasons. Both Clayton’s and Mitchell’s injuries could have been season ending, but they endured pain to be able to play after they opted to come back for this season when they could have pursued other opportunities, Boals said.

The Bobcats were the preseason favorites in the MAC, but things simply did not go their way.

“The one regret I have about coaching this team is we were only together for nine games,” Boals said. “We had our full roster for nine games, and the injuries we had, guys stepped up. Guys showed a lot of resilience, a lot of toughness multiple times throughout the course of the year. They never wavered. They came to practice, just stayed together and gave us everything they had.”