COLUMBUS — Tuesday night’s showdown at the Schottenstein Center matched up a coach once considered a favorite to replace Thad Matta, against the one who actually took the OSU job.
After watching Chris Holtmann’s Buckeyes run Archie Miller’s Hoosiers right out of the building, Ohio State fans have to feel pretty good about how that hiring process worked out.
OSU used an early 10-0 run to jump out to a 14-5 lead, and was never seriously threatened after that as they rolled to a 71-56 win. The Buckeyes are now 19-5 overall and 10-1 in Big Ten play.
OSU came out of the locker room on fire, hitting 11 of their first 15 shots from the field en route to a 24-10 lead.
Impressively, it all happened on an off-night in the scoring department for Buckeye star Keita Bates-Diop, who finished with just 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting. That didn’t matter because two of his teammates stepped up.
Freshman forward Kaleb Wesson hit all seven of his field goal attempts for 14 points and Jae’Sean Tate led the way for the Buckeyes with 16.
The Bucks outshot Indiana 63% to 33% from the field in the first half, and out-rebounded IU 19-10. That all added up to a 38-23 OSU advantage at the midway point.
The second half was just more of the same. Kam Williams threw down a dunk to make it 44-25 just over a minute in, and then the lead reached 20 on a Micah Potter 3-pointer with 14:38 remaining.
OSU’s lead never dipped back into single digits in the last 31 minutes of game action.
While Bates-Diop had a tough night shooting the ball, he excelled everywhere else on the court, putting up game-highs in rebounds (11), assists (5), and blocks (4).
It wasn’t a particularly crisp game for the Buckeyes, who turned it over 14 times, shot just 29% from behind the 3-point arc, and who got just nine points from their bench. But thanks to that hot start and some tight OSU defense, none of it mattered. The Hoosiers led for a total of 23 seconds all night long.
The Buckeyes will be back in action for a noon tipoff Sunday at home against Illinois.
It’s always fun to see the Buckeyes win, maybe even more than a little fun to watch them beat Indiana. Saying that, it still showed a lot of problems with this team. I know they wanted to focus on getting started before the 5-10 minute mark into games. They accomplished a little of that. THEN? They turned the game boring because their energy level dropped from sight and they just went through the motions for the most part of the game. Where did the hunger go? Where’s the killer instinct? The TEAM shows way too many personalities during games. It’s like they can’t find out who they want to be, or how to approach their opponents, or ADAPT to changing dynamics.
I’m greedy, I want more because I believe that this team has more to give.
Anybody who has followed OSU and/or Big 10 basketball knows how sweet it is to get wins over this outfit. When Indiana was good under Bob Knight it wasn’t easy. When they were cheating like crazy under Sampson or led by jerk Tom Crean, it was rewarding to win for different reasons. Good job guys, keep it up!!