Did experience sink the Buckeyes against Wisconsin? 5 takeaways from Ohio State's loss
Once again, Ohio State looked to be in a dogfight in the final minutes of a Big Ten battle. Having trailed by six points to No. 15 Wisconsin with 12:26 remaining on Wednesday night at Value City Arena, the Buckeyes used an 8-0 run to reclaim the lead and held that two-point advantage at 56-54 with 5:49 to play.
Then Max Klesmit buried a wide-open 3-pointer from the left wing on a pass out of the post from Tyler Wahl. It gave the Badgers a 57-56 lead and served not only as the final lead change of the night but the start of a game-sealing run.
Starting with Klesmit’s 3 with 5:16 to play, Wisconsin outscored Ohio State 19-4 on its home court to send the Buckeyes to a 71-60 defeat. The Badgers improved to 4-0 in the Big Ten and remained the league’s only unbeaten team while the Buckeyes dropped to 2-3 and have now lost two straight heading into a Monday road game with Michigan.
Asked what it takes for one team to pull away when a game is close in the final minutes, Wisconsin coach Greg Gard had a one-word explanation.
“Experience,” he said. “That’s a big thing.”
The Badgers return 72.0% of their minutes from a team that went 20-15 and lost in the NIT semifinals last season, the eighth-highest percentage in the country. Ohio State, which went 16-19 and missed the postseason last year, brought back 40.4% of its minutes, the 161st highest mark.
A lot of those returning players were on the floor as Wisconsin, starting with Klesmit’s 3 with 5:16 left, hit six of its final seven shots, was perfect on two 3-point attempts and went 3 for 4 from the free-throw line.
During that same stretch, Ohio State went 2 for 9 from the floor. It missed all three 3-pointers it attempted. Sophomore stalwart Bruce Thornton missed the front end of two one-and-one situations, the only free throws for the Buckeyes in the final 5:16. And with 16 seconds left, Roddy Gayle turned it over, leading to an A.J. Storr dunk that put the exclamation mark on the night.
“We didn’t make shots, for one,” Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann said of that game-closing stretch. “Missed a couple free throws. I thought those were critical. I thought some of our looks were really good and then we have probably two breakdowns defensively. We’ve got to be able to make some of those clean, easy looks.”
Fifth-year forward Jamison Battle, a transfer from Minnesota, said Ohio State has enough experience to win games like this. It’s the little details are what is holding the Buckeyes back, Battle said, and he’s putting that on his shoulders.
“Regardless if I haven’t won a lot of Big Ten games, I still feel like I’ve played in a lot of meaningful ones and played in a lot of Big Ten games,” he said. “I’ll take the responsibility to where I’ve got to be a leader in that regard and in the end we have plenty of experience. We just have to trust it.”
Here are four other takeaways from Ohio State’s loss to Wisconsin.
Roddy Gayle’s offensive struggles continue
In a 67-60 win against UCLA on Dec. 16, Gayle finished with 19 points on 6-of-11 shooting to move his scoring average to 14.7 points per game. He scored a season-low 4 in a win against New Orleans five days later but poured in a career-high 32 to lead the Buckeyes past West Virginia in Cleveland on Dec. 30.
That game against the Mountaineers has been the outlier in Gayle’s last five games. He was 4 for 15 (11 points) in a home win against Rutgers before going 3 for 17 (and 0 for 5 from deep) in the loss to the Hoosiers. Wednesday night, he went 4 for 14 and finished with 9 points.
Thirty-two of Gayle’s 65 points in the last five games came against West Virginia. Otherwise, he has averaged 8.3 points in the other four games while shooting 12 for 51 (23.5%) from the floor and going 1 for 15 (6.7%) from 3. He’s also had at least three turnovers in seven straight games.
“You can’t worry about the past,” Battle said. “He’s had his struggles, but it’s always about that next-play mentality because you can’t let the past determine the present. That’s what Roddy has. He’s someone who we have to help him forget about what’s happened and move on from it.”
Gayle made two driving layups in the final three minutes, both of which helped Ohio State cut Wisconsin’s deficit to four points.
“I liked how he attacked there late,” Holtmann said.
Ohio State has a bench problem
Not only is Ohio State’s rotation shrinking, but offensive production is drying up outside of what Battle, Gayle and Thornton can muster.
Bench points can be inflated and misinterpreted, especially if a team frequently changes its starting lineup or has a deep rotation. That is not Ohio State right now: the starting lineup has remained unchanged save for one game where Okpara was unavailable due to the flu. Against Wisconsin, only eight players saw game action and six of them were on the court for basically half the game. All five starters played at least 22:24 and freshman Scotty Middleton played 19:28 off the bench.
Otherwise, fourth-year center Zed Key played a season-low 9:53 and had 4 points and just one rebound. After scoring in double figures in five of the first six games this year off the bench, Key now has finished in single digits in six of Ohio State’s last 10 games as the Buckeyes have relied more heavily on Okpara.
After playing 27:24 in a blowout win against New Orleans on Dec. 21, fifth-year Baylor transfer Dale Bonner has seen his playing time decrease with each game and bottomed out against Wisconsin at 8:18.
Freshman Devin Royal, who missed the Indiana loss with the flu, was a healthy, unused substitute. Same for fellow freshmen Taison Chatman, who made his Big Ten debut against the Hoosiers, and center Austin Parks, who has not played since the New Orleans game. Third-year forward Kalen Etzler has totaled 10:04 in five appearances and second-year guard Bowen Hardman 11:37 in six appearances.
Royal has seen some action this year, and Chatman arrived as the highest-rated member of the four-man recruiting class. Both were reasonably expected to contribute this season, although Chatman missed most of the preseason and some of the season due to separate, unrelated injuries.
Against Wisconsin, Middleton had 5 points on 2-of-5 shooting. Bonner was scoreless for a third time this season and has totaled five points in Ohio State’s last four games while going 2 for 17 from the floor.
Ohio State’s starters attempted 47 of the team’s 56 shots. Middleton, Key and Bonner had a rebound apiece. On another night where Gayle and Thornton had their struggles offensively, the closest thing the Buckeyes had to a replacement was Middleton's 5 points.
Holtmann didn’t argue the point that the Buckeyes need more production than they’re getting from their bench but that he thinks they have guys who are capable of doing more.
“We’ve got to help them, too,” he said. “I absolutely believe we do (have guys), but we’ve got to help them. That’s going to be important for us as we continue to get in the guts of Big Ten play.”
Asked why he utilized such a short rotation against Wisconsin, Holtmann said it was “just how the game went.”
Defense is trending in the wrong direction
Ohio State entered the game ranked No. 66 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, allowing 99.3 points per 100 possessions according to KenPom.com. The Buckeyes dropped 10 spots to No. 76 nationally after what rated as their worst defensive performance of the season: 119.3 points allowed per 100 possessions.
Klesmit had a lot to do with that. He scored all 18 of his points after halftime, giving him his second-highest scoring mark of the year after he had 21 – all in the first half – in a Dec. 2 win against No. 3 Marquette. Battle said he could feel that the fourth-year guard and Wofford transfer was feeling it when he hit a pull-up jumper at the free-throw line.
“I was right there and he just made it,” Battle said. “That’s where people get in a zone. He was obviously in a zone. Kudos to Max. we’ll learn from what we did and didn’t do. There’s nothing we can do if someone’s in a zone. We can try to contain them. We were there a lot of times and in the end he was just feeling it.”
The Buckeyes allowed Indiana to finish at 111.0 points per 100 possessions in Saturday’s 71-65 loss at Assembly Hall. That was the fifth-highest mark allowed by Ohio State this season. And on a night where the defense was struggling against the Badgers, the Buckeyes finished with their third-worst adjusted offensive efficiency rating at 100.9 points per 100 possessions.
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Bruce Thornton looks tired
Gayle’s primary backcourt partner also stuffered through a dismal shooting performance at Indiana. In 30:50 at Indiana, Thornton went 4 for 17 and missed all seven of his 3-point attempts in the loss.
Against Wisconsin, Thornton was 6 for 16 (37.5%) and 1 for 5 (20.0%) from 3 while playing 36:59. During the second half, Thornton missed five of his six shot attempts, two of which were 3s, and the aforementioned two front ends of one-and-one situations.
Several of Thornton’s misses came after he got to spots where he has primarily converted from close range this year only to have his shot fail him. An 83.1% free-throw shooter this year, the late misses came with 1:51 and 1:01 remaining, respectively.
Thornton leads the team in minutes played at 521. As a freshman, he led the Buckeyes in minutes played at 1,069. He has started all 51 games Ohio State has played in his career. Against the Badgers, though, he looked a little tired in the final minutes.
“Maybe,” Holtmann said. “We might have to look at that. I know that’s going to be a common thought with his legs. I think he’s more than capable of making that, but I do think we need to get more out of our bench.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Wisconsin points to experience in win against Ohio State: 5 takeaways
