Revenge is a dish best served in the postseason, and the Buckeyes are furiously working in the kitchen right now.
With Penn State’s 65-57 victory over Northwestern Thursday evening, the Nittany Lions will take on Ohio State Friday at 6:30 pm in the third round of the Big Ten Tournament. Penn State will be looking for their third victory over OSU this season in as many attempts.
The Buckeyes finished 15-3 in Big Ten play this season and two of their losses came to PSU.
Penn State led by double figures in each half of the meeting in Columbus before winning on a three-pointer at the buzzer. The game in Happy Valley never got that close, as the Nittany Lions won by 23 points.
Whatever Penn State has, it doesn’t suit Ohio State well. So how do the Buckeyes fix it?
“I think you just go back and you look and say, ‘Hey, can we do a better job as coaches preparing? Having a better game plan, having a better attack?’ They’re very talented,” said OSU head coach Chris Holtmann.
In the first meeting, PSU shot .583 from the field and 11-of-14 from three-point territory, scoring 82 points in the process. In the second game, they “regressed” to .481 from the field and 9-of-20 from three, scoring 79 points.
Ohio State has given up 79 or more points just six times this season, and Penn State owns a third of those.
“I had a guy tell me this week that he thought they were maybe the most talented team in the league, next to Michigan State,” Holtmann said. “They’re very talented. They play together well too.”
There could be one major difference between this game and the previous two, however, as PSU starting forward Mike Watkins is doubtful with a knee injury that he suffered last week. Watkins was averaging 12 points and 9 rebounds per game. In the two contests with Ohio State, he averaged 9 points and 7.5 rebounds.
Holtmann and his staff have had to prepare for two opponents since the Big Ten bracket was announced, which makes things a little bit difficult to suss out, but the one thing that they know without watching any film is that effort is always going to be a key.
“I think for us, we’re going to have to try to dig in,” he said. “As coaches we’re going to have to look at some things that we need to do better to put our guys in a better position. We have to play certainly harder than what we did at their place, and then at our place as well.”
In the end, Holtmann doesn’t want to change who the Buckeyes are, because who they have been to this point is pretty good. But there have been some things that didn’t work, which will need to be addressed before they tip Friday evening.
“It’s a tough balance because you’re not trying to invent the wheel because we’ve had a very successful year, but you’re also looking at, ‘Hey, there’s some things that we can do that we didn’t do as coaches in those two games.’ We’re searching for that,” he said.
And as for the players, they prepared for both Penn State and Northwestern, but when it comes to which team they were rooting for, it all comes back to competition.
“As competitors, you always want to play the team that beat you,” said point guard C.J. Jackson.