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.
