With the game as dicey as it had been since the opening tip, Jamison Battle answered the bell for Ohio State on Sunday evening at Value City Arena. Then Bruce Thornton did. Then Roddy Gayle followed suit, and the challenge was finally beaten back.

In the Big Ten opener for both teams, the Buckeyes (7-1, 1-0 Big Ten) built a 22-point lead during the first half and never trailed in what would become an 84-74 win against Minnesota (5-3, 0-1) in front of 10,481 fans. And yet, for a minute, the Golden Gophers threatened to make it interesting.

Dawson Garcia and his 36 points, a record high for an opponent inside this arena, had a lot to do with that. But with Minnesota within 72-66 with 3:24 to play, Battle buried a 3-pointer to extend Ohio State’s lead back to three possessions. Garcia scored in the paint on the next possession, but Thornton hit his lone 3-pointer to push it back to double digits. Undeterred, Minnesota got a dunk from Pharrel Payne, only for Gayle to – what else? – hit a 3-pointer.

Three 3-pointers. Three consecutive possessions. Seventy-five seconds. With that, the door that might’ve been just slightly cracked open by the Golden Gophers was slammed shut. Thornton finished with 26 on 8 of 12 shooting, Battle was right behind with 25 on 7 of 12 shooting and Gayle had 16 on 5 of 8 shooting.

Combined, the three nearly scored outscored Minnesota, finishing with 67 of Ohio State’s 84 points (79.8%). They made 76.9% of Ohio State’s 26 field goals while shooting 62.5% (20 for 32) from the field and were a combined 20 for 22 from the free-throw line.

Minnesota had Garcia, and he was a nightmare. Ohio State had three guys, and those three walked into and out of Value City Arena as their team’s top scorers.

You can call them the three primary offensive players. Battle won’t.

“To say us three are the scorers, yeah, you could say that, but when we really look at it everyone contributes in their own way on this team,” he said. “That’s what’s so special about it. You trust in every person on this team. To say that only three people are those guys, you can say that but I don’t think any of us believe that.”

After averaging 4.6 points per game as a freshman, Gayle has more than tripled that and sits at 14.6. After eight games, he’s closing in on last year’s season scoring total (117 this year, 162 last year). Thornton has scored at least 20 points four times this year after doing so three times last season, and his scoring has nearly doubled from 10.6 to 19.3. In his first year with the Buckeyes, Battle is shooting a career-best 42.0% (21 for 50) from 3 and averaging 14.0 points.

Others have and will continue to chip in, but those three are clearly starting to separate themselves atop the stat sheet.

“I think that’ll get solidified as the year goes on,” coach Chris Holtmann said when asked if the three had solidified themselves as the team’s go-to players. “I think Zed (Key) on a night can get double figures. I thought Scotty (Middleton) gave us great minutes tonight. Made shots and played his role at a good level. Dale (Bonner) can get us double figures on a given night, (but) all three of those guys have early in the season proven they’re pretty consistent in that.”

Although the defense has been the priority (and rightly so after last year’s results), Battle, Gayle and Thornton are helping Ohio State’s offense produce at a high efficiency level despite losing one-and-done forward Brice Sensabaugh to the first round of the NBA draft. According to KenPom.com, Ohio State is 15th in 3-point shooting percentage (40.0%), 16th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency (117.8 points per 100 possessions), 40th in offensive rebounding percentage (35.7%) and 41st in effective field-goal percentage (54.8%).

To summarize: the offense just looks better.

“(Sensabaugh) had a great year and that’s why he’s in the NBA,” Thornton said. “This year, I feel like it’s way hard to guard when you have three people at any moment who can give you a bucket. The defense has to be on their toes at all times.

“I feel like me hitting the shot, Roddy hitting the shot, Jamison hitting the shot, you can’t key on one person. At any moment, we can get downhill, be aggressive and set somebody up for a wide-open play. When you have that, it’s hard to guard.”

Here are four other takeaways from Ohio State’s win.

Buckeyes not apologizing for game getting tight late

Minnesota coach Ben Johnson was clear about what the difference was to him in this game.

“I felt like they were the aggressor and I didn’t think it was close, that whole first half,” he said in his opening statement. “That’s something we talked about for two days. They punched us first and we just took it. I thought they had momentum on both sides of the ball for the first 20 minutes.”

Later, he added, “I thought we were a little soft to start and it carried them.”

Ohio State led 14-2 nearly six minutes into the game and 42-28 at the half. Minnesota would get within six points at two points during the second half but never had the ball with a chance to make it a one-possession game for the final 37:36. Even as Garcia got going late, Ohio State was able to make enough plays to keep the Gophers at bay.

After going 5-15 in the Big Ten last year, losing 14 of 15 games at one point and dropping a 70-67 game to a Minnesota team that won two league games last season, Thornton and Holtmann were measured in their response to this win: there’s plenty to work on, but there’s no turning down a double-digit win to open conference play.

“You cherish every moment, especially what I went through last year,” Thornton said. “I take every win, I celebrate it and tomorrow it’s onto the next. I feel very confident about what we did today. We’ve still got a lot of stuff to work on There’s no ugly wins in the Big Ten.”

Asked about Ohio State’s strong start and its ability to make plays late, Holtmann credited his team’s pace and attention to detail. For other stretches of the game, that wasn’t always there, and Garcia had something to do with that. Being forced to battle is something the coach said should pay dividends even if it wasn’t always the most enjoyable experience.

“There’s part of a coach that’s glad now (that we were pushed late),” he said. “I was not glad in the moment, but now I think there is real teaching opportunities here. If we can recognize this, have a better understanding of how we can correct these things, it can absolutely provide real benefit.”

Dawson Garcia torches Ohio State’s defense

Something about Value City Arena agrees with Minnesota’s fourth-year forward. Now in his second season with the Gophers, the 6-10, 230-pound Garcia put up a career-high 28 points in last year’s upset win against the Buckeyes in the lone meeting between the teams. Through 20 minutes Sunday night, Garcia didn’t look to be headed toward any kind of milestone: he had 8 points on 2 of 8 shooting.

Garcia then played the entire second half and scored 28 points on 10 of 17 shooting while drawing nine fouls and going 8 for 10 from the line. In short, he was a problem.

“The challenge was they had shooting on the floor for large parts of that stretch,” Holtmann said. “We’ve looked at a couple different ways to trap him. For us, we felt like let’s see if he can attack us. We had to make some adjustments as he got going in the second half.”

Some of Garcia’s production came while matched up with Battle.

“He’s a special player,” Battle said. “That was my roommate last year. I’ve known him forever. He works his butt off and you can tell. I’ve got the upmost respect for him and the guys on that team and the coaching staff as well. Credit to Dawson and what he did. I’m just happy we got the win and we got our first Big Ten win.”

Johnson said it was largely a case of Garcia getting hot and his teammates feeding him within the flow of their offense. He’ll get another shot at Ohio State in the Feb. 22 rematch at Williams Arena.

“I think he’s as good of a player on the front line in terms of his versatility as there is in the league,” Holtmann said. “There’s obviously going to be other really good players. We need to get better at guarding a guy like that.”

His 36 points topped Nebraska’s James Palmer, who had 34 in a 64-59 Ohio State win on Jan. 22, 2018.

Chris Holtmann is still tinkering with things

There were two lineup situations the coach didn’t seem particularly enthused about.

With 2:39 to play in the first half and Ohio State ahead 42-20, Holtmann took Thornton out of the game. It was 42-22 with 1:21 left when Thornton checked back in alongside freshman Devin Royal. Minnesota closed the half with an 8-0 run, sending a message that the second half wouldn’t be an out-and-out blowout.

“It might’ve been the lineup that I had in,” Holtmann said. “I was trying to get Bruce to halftime with just one foul. I probably should have put him in there, because we had a little bit of inexperience in some other spots. That’s probably on me. Then I thought we missed a good drive and finish. Devin had a really good drive, we just missed it, and that ended up being a four-point play because they scored at the other end.”

Ohio State also tinkered with playing Key and Okpara together, something that's been often mentioned as a possibility.

“We’ve got to practice that more,” Holtmann said. “The numbers, the analytics to it, it has not been a great lineup for us on either end, but we’ve got to keep looking at it.”

In a word: why?

“Because I think we’re gonna need to do it in certain games, and in particular in certain Big Ten games,” he said. “Valid question. I’m not, though eight games, ready to scrap a lineup that I think might have some potential in limited situations.”

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High-flying Jamison Battle?

For all he’d done to this point in the season, Battle hadn’t yet dunked the ball for the Buckeyes.

That changed with exactly eight minutes left when Thornton stole the ball from Elijah Hawkins and looked upcourt with Ohio State ahead 64-52.

“As soon as I got the rebound, I just saw somebody flying down the court,” Thornton said. “I said, ‘Gotta be 10.’ I threw him the ball and thought, ‘You’ve gotta dunk this,’ because if he wasn’t gonna dunk it, I would’ve had attitude.”

Battle did exactly that, forcing a Minnesota timeout with 7:48 left.

“You don’t get those very often,” Battle said. “I saw we got the steal. I knew Bruce had it, and I was out of there. I wanted that dunk, especially against your former team. You’ve got a point guard like Bruce who’s going to see you, I figured if I got up there he’s going to throw me the ball.”

ajardy@dispatch.com

@AdamJardy

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Battle, Thornton and Gayle leading Ohio State attack: 5 takeaways