Can effort shown in Maryland win carry Ohio State in road showdown with Wisconsin?
There’s a pretty lengthy list of things Ohio State did Saturday afternoon for the first time in a while.
Down by 10 points during the first half against the Big Ten’s stingiest defense, the Buckeyes rallied. With the game in the balance at the end of regulation, they got a clutch, critical 3-pointer to tie the game and eventually send it to overtime. Defensively, they made life tough on a prolific scoring guard.
It all added up to an increasingly rare victory, breaking a much-documented run of five straight losses and defeats in eight of nine games. It took every bit of fight Ohio State could muster to fend off Maryland in double overtime thanks to Bruce Thornton’s 3-pointer, Roddy Gayle’s defense against Jahmir Young and a refusal to win the Buckeyes haven’t shown much lately.
Ohio State’s 79-75 win was its first in three weeks and only its second in the last five weeks. Tuesday night, it goes to No. 20 Wisconsin in search of its first road win in 408 days.
The game plan will be different. But for the Buckeyes to snap their 15-game road losing streak and win consecutive games for the first time since a four-game streak ended with a Jan. 6 loss at Indiana, the way they played against the Terrapins will have to make the trip with them.
“I hope we can take some of the things we did there particularly late the last 15 minutes of the game where it was back and forth and at times didn’t look good,” coach Chris Holtmann said Monday. “I thought our guys played with tremendous offensive poise there. Hopefully we can take those moments where we just played and played with an aggressiveness that I felt we lacked a bit against Indiana.”
That played out on Thornton’s 3-pointer with 1:01 left that tied the game at 61. Neither team scored in the remainder of regulation, making it the first critical 3-pointer the Buckeyes have made arguably all season. There have been opportunities for others – Jamison Battle had an open 3 that would’ve sent a Penn State road loss into overtime, most notably – but in those moments Ohio State has come up empty time and time again.
Seeing a big one finally swish through the net is the kind of moment Holtmann said can have a cumulative effect, and Thornton talked afterward about the confidence gained by hitting late-game shots.
“You have that mentality about you, that swagger that I’m going to make that next play, that next shot,” Thornton said.
They’ll need that Tuesday night, even as Wisconsin’s season has recently taken an abrupt left turn. The Badgers were 16-4 overall and 8-1 in the Big Ten when they went to Nebraska and led 47-29 with 16:14 to play only to collapse and take an 80-72 overtime loss to the Cornhuskers. They’ve followed that with a home loss to No. 1 Purdue, a four-point loss at Michigan and a stunning, 22-point loss at Rutgers on Saturday.
During those four games, the Badgers are 23 for 90 (25.6%) from 3-point range. In their last three losses, they are 13 for 59 (22.0%). Both numbers are nearly 10 percentage points lower than their season 3-point shooting mark of 34.1%. Haslametrics.com, a college basketball analytics website, has the Badgers 336th nationally in momentum.
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At BartTorvik.com, another analytics website, Wisconsin has rated as the nation’s No. 117 team in February – 34 spots lower than Ohio State during the same span.
In the first meeting between the teams, Ohio State led 56-52 with 6:14 remaining and was outscored 19-4 from that point in a 71-60 loss. Closing halves and games has been an issue for the Buckeyes all season, but Saturday’s win against Maryland was an exception. While Ohio State is planning for the specifics of how Wisconsin won last time, it’s also looking to how it played against Maryland as a guide for its remaining games.
“We’ll see what the mentality and the fight of our kids are,” Holtmann said. “That’s what we’re all anxious to see. What is our fight, our poise, our togetherness in those environments we’re going to face?”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: How could gritty Maryland win help Ohio State at Wisconsin?
