NORFOLK — Two and a half minutes into the second half Wednesday, Old Dominion looked like a confident, talented team capable of beating anyone.

But, as it often has this season, the disguise soon came off. Then came the wheels.

Wyatt Fricks scored 24 points and Marshall overcame a 17-point second-half deficit in an 81-79 win over the collapsible Monarchs at Chartway Arena.

ODU led 56-39 after a short jumper by LJ Thomas with 17:23 left in the game. From there, the Thundering Herd (16-9, 8-4 Sun Belt) couldn’t miss, and ODU (8-18, 4-9) couldn’t keep up.

Marshall shot 62% from the field and made 7 of 11 3-pointers in the second half, scoring eight of the final 10 points of the game.

“That last 20 minutes was … was bad, especially on the defensive end,” second-year Monarchs coach Mike Jones said. “And then a couple of untimely turnovers there.”

Trailing by the final margin with six seconds left, ODU inbounded the ball and quickly went three-quarters of the court. Jordan Battle dribbled most of it before stopping near the 3-point line on the left wing and putting up an off-balance shot through a double-team at the horn.

ODU, which had led for more than 34 minutes, had completed its snatch of defeat.

Marshall scored 18 points off of nine turnovers, none more costly than an errant pass by Thomas that sailed out of bounds with 12 seconds left.

Thomas scored 18 points for the Monarchs, who shot 51% to the Herd’s 54%.

ODU 7-footer Caelum Swanton-Rodger, a Canadian senior who scored 15 points despite early foul trouble, said his team needs to get its psychology straightened out on defense.

“I think it’s definitely a part of it, the mental aspect of it,” he said. “I feel like as a team, we sometimes get a little down when things don’t go the way we want them to.

“We’ve shown that we can do it, and we need to if we want to win these games down the stretch.”

Trailing 66-53, Marshall used an 18-5 run to tie it at 71-71 with just under seven minutes left.

An easy steal and dunk by Landen Joseph gave the Herd an 81-77 lead with 1:08 left, and ODU could do no right from there.

Jones said the final play, which came after a timeout, was designed to have either Jared Turner or Scottie Hubbard — two of the team’s fastest penetrators — drive the lane from either side. Instead, Battle hoisted a prayer through traffic.

The Monarchs face Georgia State on Saturday in the fourth game of a five-game homestand.

Another dose of heartbreak aside, they plan to press on.

“We can’t change the result of this game or any of the games that we’ve already played,” Swanton-Rodger said. “But we can keep our best foot forward and we can keep working and we can get it done.”

ODU guard Robert Davis Jr. missed a second straight game with an undisclosed injury. The preseason Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year, Davis is being evaluated at practice each day.

The game did produce a strange moment. With 18:14 to go in the first half and ODU leading 4-0, at 7:42 p.m., an area power outage turned the arena completely dark and elicited a gasp from the announced crowd of 4,367. The lights came back on right away, but none of the scoreboards worked until 8:04 p.m., with 12:40 left on the clock and the Monarchs — to the edification of many, no doubt — leading 18-12.

After shooting a scorching 62% and scoring 30 points in the paint, the Monarchs took a 47-34 lead into the break. Swanton-Rodger, playing like the rim had insulted Canada, scored 14 points in 11 first-half minutes,

Playing perhaps its best 20 minutes of the season, ODU enjoyed an 11-2 run midway through the half after a pair of 8-0 spurts, the first perpetrated entirely by Swanton-Rodger in the post.

But it wasn’t nearly enough. With Swanton-Rodger on the bench for much of the second half, the 6-10 Fricks feasted in the paint when his teammates weren’t making 3s.

“We’ve had some halves where we got it done, but we’ve got to learn how to finish,” Jones said. “And it’s February. Like, what are we waiting on?”

David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com.

https://www.dailypress.com/2026/02/11/odu-men-squander-17-point-lead-in-loss-to-marshall/