Ohio State Basketball: Things to take away from Penn State loss

The loss could be a great learning situation for the Buckeyes.

It wasn’t likely that Ohio State would go through the Big Ten Conference schedule undefeated, but losing to Penn State 82-79 was a surprise to most. Why did the Buckeyes find themselves in a situation where they could lose on a buzzer beater to a team with a sub .500 conference record?

Let’s look at the events that led up to Tony Carr’s game winning shot. I think they are learning situations which could help the Buckeyes going forward.

Another slow start:

Ohio State falling behind early in the game is beginning to be the norm. Last night it was a 12 point deficit.

The Buckeyes came back to tie the score at 30 and were only down one at the half, but climbing uphill just to get back into the game takes a lot of energy. Could that have contributed to the second half defensive woes?

Questionable officiating affected Ohio State:

Everybody who has ever played basketball knows there will be bad calls during a game. One that went against the Buckeyes frustrated a player and the other changed the complexion of the game.

It appeared Jae’Sean Tate scored on a drive to the basket and was fouled as a Penn State player obviously slid sideways to draw contact and another hit him from the side. Instead of going to the line trying to convert a three point play, Tate was called for an offensive foul. It was evident he was upset with the call and picked up his third personal shortly afterwards on a reach-in, which was definitely out of frustration.

With just under 15 minutes to play Keita Bates-Diop picked up his fourth personal. Everyone who was watching the game missed the foul except for the referee.

That put KBD on the bench and the Ohio State offense stalled. That has often been the case when the Big Ten scoring leader takes a breather as there is no flow to the offense, and they don’t have Bates-Diop to look to when the possession clock is running down.

By the time the Buckeyes began storming back the Nittany Lions had built a 13 point lead. It took a barrage of threes by KBD in the last couple of minutes, the last one with 5 seconds to play, to tie the game at 79.

It looked like the game would then go to overtime. However, coach Holtmann had used up his timeouts with the problems the Buckeyes had in the second half and couldn’t call one to set up the defense. That gave Tony Carr a free lane down the left side of the court to launch his long game winning shot.

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Don’t get me wrong, the Nittany Lions deserved to win the game with the way they played. They came out of the gate determined to pull off a victory and played hard for 40 minutes, literally.

I’m just pointing out that if the Buckeyes would have tightened things up a bit it could have been a different story. But the lessons learned could prove invaluable down the road.

Ohio State has had problems with slow starts for some time and the offense has often been stagnant with Bates-Diop on the bench, but it hadn’t resulted in a conference loss. Now it has and that will get the attention of the players.

What better time than now for an awakening with about half of the Big Ten schedule left to play and the Purdue game coming up in a couple of weeks. The Penn State loss will sting for a little while but may be the best thing that could have happened, and at the right time.

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Now the Ohio State players will understand it is important to play well from the opening tipoff, and coach Holtmann can tweak the offense to make it more effective when Bates-Diop isn’t on the floor. That will certainly benefit the Buckeyes come tournament time.

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