As Illinois visits, how much better can Ohio State basketball get in only three days?
How much better can a basketball team struggling with confidence get in a matter of three days?
For the sake of its season, the Ohio State men’s team is hoping for quite a lot. Saturday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena, the Buckeyes flirted with the program’s most lopsided loss to Northwestern and ultimately took an 83-58 loss. It was the second double-digit road defeat of the week, a fifth loss in six games and the least competitive game of the season for the Buckeyes.
Afterward, coach Chris Holtmann was pretty blunt in his assessment: the Buckeyes have to be better. By hook or by crook, if they want to turn this season around, they have to be better. Pick seemingly any area of the game, and the Buckeyes have to improve.
Tuesday night, Ohio State hosts No. 15 Illinois. It’s the midpoint of Big Ten season for the Buckeyes. How much better can they be?
“That’s the challenge in front of us right now, and an exciting one at that, is just figuring out how to really maximize our time here as we do have short turnarounds, different styles of play,” Holtmann said Monday afternoon.
On paper, Illinois brings a more formidable challenge to Value City Arena than the team that just beat the Buckeyes by 25 points. The Fighting Illini boast the Big Ten’s second-best offense in league play, averaging 80.3 points per game, and the fourth-best defense that is allowing 71.7 points per game. The Wildcats, buoyed in part by their domination of the Buckeyes, are fourth and 11th, respectively.
The Illini play without a true center and bring a different stylistic profile than the Wildcats. Illinois is ranked and Northwestern is not, but the Wildcats took down the Illini also inside Welsh-Ryan Arena last week. In their loss, though, Illinois put up 91 points and lost in overtime.
The Buckeyes’ 58-point effort at Northwestern was their lowest scoring output of the year. Although Ohio State shot a season-high 33 free throws, its 14 made field goals were the fewest since the Buckeyes equaled that number in a 58-48 loss at Michigan State on Feb. 11, 2012.
Defensively, Ohio State struggled even more. Northwestern finished with an adjusted offensive efficiency rating of 135.2 points per 100 possessions, the seventh-worst total allowed by the Buckeyes in Big Ten play since the 1998-99 season according to KenPom.com. The game also continued a trend of poor 3-point defense: Northwestern went 10 for 19 from 3-point range, moving Ohio State’s league opponents to 42.0% from deep this season.
That’s dead last in the league.
“I think it’s a combination of things,” Holtmann said. “Some of it has been (needing) better challenges, better contests. That’s been one area, being able to get through screening actions better than we have, navigating those a little bit better. A couple have come off of poor switches.”
Expecting the Buckeyes to go from worst to first in a three-day window is mathematically impossible. Some improvement would be nice, though, and it’s needed on both ends.
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“We’re just going through a patch right now, but it’s all right,” sophomore captain Bruce Thornton said after the Northwestern loss. “I still have that trust and faith in my teammates. I know I keep saying that, but it’s the confidence that I have in myself and my teammates that we’re going to turn this around. We’re going to turn Ohio State basketball around.”
There’s 11 games left in the regular season to do that. Against a team like the Illini, which ranks among the top 30 nationally in both adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency, a better performance could still easily result in a loss.
Given how the last week has gone, better would at least be a start. After missing the NCAA Tournament last year, and after starting this season 12-2 overall and 2-1 in the league, the pressure is only growing on the Buckeyes to turn it around in Holtmann’s seventh season.
“The focus has to be on just what’s in front of us,” the coach said. “Nothing else matters. It seems like everything matters right now, but nothing else matters outside of just getting better today and making sure we’re maximizing the time we have together today and throwing ourselves fully into that.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: As Illinois visits, can Ohio State basketball get better quickly?
