Well, it looked good in the first half. The second half was an entirely different story as the Buckeyes found playing the game of basketball very difficult. Michigan State team turned up the defense and intensity — going to a place Ohio State just didn’t want to go.
In the end, it’s a lost opportunity and it resulted in a further spiral down for a program that looked so good at the beginning of the year. Perhaps no half of basketball was as ugly as the second half for Ohio State this year.
Here’s three things we learned.
Next … someone has to stop the insanity
Who is the leader on this year’s Buckeye team that’s had enough?
It’s time to ask who has pride on this team? In the second half, when things started to get tough, nobody said that’s enough and took control of a team that got frazzled and fragmented. Ohio State just doesn’t have the leader or leaders on the team it needs to turn adverse conditions around.
Simply put, this team quit, and that’s too bad. If anything, you have to display pride and finish a game the right way. It’s a pattern that emerged against the first Michigan State game in the second half and has continued on since then.
Next … the best defense is offense?
Ohio State is offensively challenged
The only way this team wins is by doing it on the defensive end. In fact, that effort was pretty good today — there just wasn’t any answer on the offensive side. We started to see freshman Luther Muhammad try to take things in his own hands, and that was largely because Ohio State failed to take advantage of Nick Ward being out of the game in the post. Where was Kaleb Wesson? Why wasn’t there more of an effort to get him involved in the second half?
Wesson’s the best option Ohio State has, but he goes missing in the second half. Why? Is it a conditioning issue, or does the team just lose sight of what worked to start the game? Any way you look at it, there’s nobody else that can seem to get his own shot, and when teams clamp down on the blocks, there’s nowhere to go.
The sad truth? The Buckeyes scored just 13 points in the second half. I didn’t think that was possible in today’s game, but I was proven frustratingly wrong.
Next … the “other” tournament
Buckeyes NIT bound?
When it’s all said and done, I have a hard time believing this team can do enough to get into the NCAA Tournament. If you watched the same thing I did today, the compete level isn’t there to make up for the deficiencies the 2018-19 version of Ohio State is clearly saddled with.
I think the Buckeyes has to win four more of the following to be safely into the NCAA Tourney; Northwestern, at Maryland, Iowa, at Purdue, at Northwestern, and against Wisconsin.
Show me four wins in there. It just isn’t there unless there’s a come to Jesus moment with this team. OSU might squeak in with three wins in there because of the relatively weak bubble team profiles this year, but things are looking more like the NIT this year.
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