It was bound to happen at some point. An Ohio State team that had looked nearly unbeatable through the first nine games of the season laid an absolute egg tonight. The defense wasn’t its normal stingy self, it was a bad shooting night, and warts of the past showed up for the first time in 2019.
At the end of the day, there’s not much to take from this one other than a helping of humble pie after a 84-71 loss to the Golden Gophers. The Buckeyes now fall to 9-1 and 1-1 in the Big Ten in an extremely shocking dud of a performance in “The Barn.”
Here’s three things we learned.
Next … Kaleb Wesson of the past
Kaleb Wesson and foul trouble again
Just when you thought the older Wesson had this thing licked, here we go again. Hopefully it’s not a pattern we’ll now start to see, but he reverted to some bad habits tonight. He changed his body over the offseason, and that seemed to help his ability to move and get in position, but not tonight.
Wesson used poor judgement on screens and down low on the blocks when defending, and he picked up four fouls early in the second half. And with some youth in key spots, not having him on the floor makes it awful tough to create magic on the road. He’s got to be better.
Next … The road isn’t always kind in the B1G
Welcome to the road in the Big Ten
Going to North Carolina and coming out with a blow out win against a blue blood is nothing to sneeze at, but I think we’re going to see that the Tar Heels aren’t what we normally see from a Roy Williams coached team in Chapel Hill.
There’s some guys on this team that haven’t gotten a taste of life on the road in the Big Ten, and I’m not sure this team knew what it was in store for. Hopefully this is a growth opportunity. Even the bottom half of the Big Ten seems to perform above its pay grade in its own building. You have to bring it every night.
Next … Panic at the Barn
Ohio State has to learn to stay with its game plan
What has normally been the hallmark of a Chris Holtmann coached team is its ability to stay the course even through adversity. Adversity came in a big way tonight but this team got away from what it does well. There was a lot of effort but without execution. When Minnesota went on a run in the first half and went up by ten, guys started forcing things and settling for jump shots.
This team is good, but it’s not good enough to just ad-lib its way through scoring issues. It was bad tonight. Horribly bad. Guys played out of character, lost their head, and simply played a bad, bad collective game. Lesson learned? We’ll see. There are definitely some teaching moments for Holtmann to use from tonight.
