ATHENS, Ohio - After struggling with scoring for most of its six-game road trip, the North Carolina A&T men's basketball team found a higher rate of success on Friday, but it wasn't enough as Ohio University defeated the Aggies 82-66.

The Aggies shot a road-trip best 55.8 percent at the Convocation Center, but a second-half scoring drought and 24 turnovers counteracted their shooting effort.

"As the trip has gone on, there's no question that we have improved," said N.C. A&T head coach Jerry Eaves. "We've gotten better and better after the St. Mary's game. Our turnovers just killed us again in the second half. We had 66 points and 24 turnovers.  We had an opportunity to have 90 points, but we shot ourselves in the foot with all of the turnovers. We just have to continue to cut down on our turnovers, since that is our Achilles' heel right now. We need to value the ball better."

The Aggies (4-10) opened Friday's contest shooting 69.6 percent, their best field goal percentage in the first half all season. It was a stark improvement from their previous 20 minutes of play, in which they finished 20.8 percent in the second half at Akron on Wednesday.

"Our turnovers did not come when we were executing our offense in transition," said Eaves. "It's when we slowed down the tempo, we picked up unforced turnovers."

The Bobcats took a 56-45 lead with 16:08 left in the game on a fast break dunk by Reggie Keely.  The Aggies snapped a two-minute scoring drought as Jeremy Underwood got to the stripe on a foul by Stevie Taylor, who led Ohio with 19 points, to make it 56-46.

Senior guard Nic Simpson later cut the Ohio lead to nine with his third 3-pointer of the game to make it a 58-49 contest.  Junior Adrian Powell followed that up with his own shot from beyond the arc to continue to put pressure on the Bobcats.  But Ohio guard Nick Kellogg, son of college basketball announcer Clark Kellogg, answered with his own three to give the Bobcats a 61-52 lead.

With 8:23 left in the game, junior Jean Louisme collected his three points with a shot from beyond the arc to cut it back down to a six-point game at 65-59.  Ohio then went on a 9-0 run to widen the gap, as the Aggies had a four-minute scoring drought until Simpson scored on a 3-pointer to make it 74-62  with 4:34 left in the game.

DaMetrius Upchurch led the Aggies in scoring for the first time this season as he finished with 15 points. Simpson added 14 and junior Austin Witter ended the night with 12.

"DaMetrius really played well," said Eaves. "He was active and aggressive and shot the ball well."

The Aggies and the Bobcats exchanged the lead eight times in the first half. The two teams went back and forth until senior Marc Hill knotted the score at 25 with a layup. Ohio's Taylor hit a pair of threes to take a 34-27 lead with 5:15 left in the first half. N.C. A&T pulled within three on a 3-pointer by Witter to make it 42-39 as time expired in the first half.

"We shot layups," Eaves said about the Aggies first-half strategy. "We were trying to play some aggressive man-to-man, we spread the floor out and we were able to beat them off the dribble. We shot a ton of layups and had a ton of 3-point opportunities."

The Aggies look to continue to build upon the improvements they made on Friday.

'We were doing everything we wanted to offensively, except for the turnovers, we gave them too many more shot opportunities," Eaves said, "It was a very hard-fought game."

Eaves summed up the road trip by saying: "It was a long road trip for us, but to be out here 14 days for seven games, I'm really proud of them. They played their hearts out tonight. I'm feeling much better now than I was a week ago."

The Aggies will return to action 3 p.m., Dec. 28 at the University of Houston.