  In recent years, we constructed a microscopic optical potential (OP) for
elastic nucleon-nucleus ($NA$) scattering using modern approaches based on
chiral theories for the nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) interaction. The OP was derived
at first order of the spectator expansion in Watson multiple scattering theory
and its final expression was a folding integral between the $NN$ $t$ matrix and
the nuclear density of the target. Two- and three-body forces are consistently
included both in the target and in the projectile description. The purpose of
this work is to apply our microscopic OP to nuclei characterized by a ground
state of spin-parity quantum numbers $J^\pi \ne 0^+$. We extended our formalism
to include the spin of the target nucleus. The full amplitudes of the $NN$
reaction matrix are retained in the calculations starting from two- and
three-body chiral forces. We show a remarkable agreement with experimental data
for the available observables and, simultaneously, provide reliable estimates
for the theoretical uncertainties. This work paves the way toward a full
microscopic approach to inelastic $NA$ scattering, showing that the derivation
of optical potentials between states with $J^\pi \ne 0^+$ is completely under
control.
