OXFORD — Mekhi Cooper went into a loose-ball skirmish but quickly noticed that Evan Ipsaro was going to come away with it.
So, Cooper made a mad dash down the court.
Ipsaro lobbed a pass to Cooper, who slammed one home to get the Millett Hall crowd buzzing.
“Cooper’s dunk I thought was a gamechanger,” Miami coach Travis Steele said. “Just energy, momentum — Millett Hall all of a sudden just came alive. It was an amazing play.
“I’ve never seen him jump that high. I was shocked,” Steele added. “I told him afterwards, I thought he was going to do a little high school layup, slap the foam — like I used to do.
“He went up there off two feet, man, and dunked that ball. He was eye-level with the rim. I thought that gave the gym a ton of energy, gave our guys a ton of belief, and it changed the game.”
Cooper scored a team-high 14 points and the Miami RedHawks beat Bowling Green 84-76 on Tuesday night to extend their winning streak to eight games for the first time since the 1996-97 season.
Miami (14-4) is also off to a 6-0 start in Mid-American Conference play for the first time since the 2005-06 season.
Kam Craft bucketed 13 points for the RedHawks, who had six players score in double figures. Brant Byers had 12 points, Antoine Woolfolk and Peter Suder added 11 apiece, and Eian Elmer chipped in with 10. Woolfolk pulled down a team-high seven rebounds.
Byers scored 10 points in the first half and Miami went into the break trailing 40-39. The RedHawks used a 13-0 second-half run — which was capped by a Cooper 3-point bucket — to take the lead at 69-56 with 6:49 left.
Suder drained a trey with 35 seconds remaining to give Miami an 82-76 lead that all but sealed it.
“You’ve just got to get a good one up,” Suder said. “That’s the main goal. You’ve got to put it on the rim so that you can get a rebound if you do miss. But towards the end, I didn’t have the best night. But towards the last minute and a half, I thought I played pretty well.”
The Falcons (7-11, 2-4 MAC) were led by Trey Thomas and Derrick Butler with 17 points apiece. Jamai Felt had 15 points and six rebounds.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for their team,” Steele said of Bowling Green. “I think they’ve got a really good team. I think you’ll see them make a huge run here in the MAC.”
Coach quotable
“I see those guys every day in practice. We’re a young team on paper — a very young team. Probably the youngest team in the league,” Steele said. “But we’re super talented. We have really good players. Youth is an excuse. I really believe that. Our job is to be able to develop those guys, get them to execute, get them to understand what wins and what doesn’t win.
“We’ve recruited winners, too. Those guys have all come from winning programs, so they know what it smells like, feels like, looks like. They know. They know. We recruit programs, and I think that’s an important distinction.”
Up next
Miami travels to Akron on Saturday in a 2 p.m. battle between the MAC’s top two teams. The Zips (13-5, 6-0 MAC) have won six in a row and are a perfect 9-0 at home.
“I know that this is going to be a great college basketball game,” Steele said. “A high-level environment at the JAR (James A. Rhodes Arena). That thing is going to be packed. You’re going to have two really, really, really good teams battling it out. So our guys are going to obviously look forward to that game at a high level. I will be a great college basketball game on Saturday.”
