Ohio State Basketball: How will Buckeyes respond from loss?
How the Ohio State players respond after the loss to Penn State will determine whether the Buckeyes are serious contenders for the Big Ten title or not.
The Ohio State Buckeyes lost their second game of the Big Ten season at Penn State Thursday night. Now they need a win against Michigan in Ann Arbor to keep pace with Michigan State for the conference lead. How will the Buckeyes respond after losing to the Nittany Lions in Happy Valley?
On the surface this may seem to be a been-there done-that situation. Ohio State’s only other conference loss was to Penn State and the Buckeyes went on a four game winning streak afterwards.
However, the loss on January 25th was a by three points on a long bomb at the buzzer. Thursday night Penn State won by 23 points and dominated the entire game. Will that put doubts in the Ohio State players’ minds heading into the Michigan game?
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In the first loss Keita Bates-Diop got off to a slow start as he was battling an illness but turned things around and scored 25 points. And he personally brought the Buckeyes back from a big deficit to tie the game with five seconds to play.
In the recent loss to Penn State he was held to just 10 points on 4-11 shooting. If Michigan holds KBD to something close to that kind of scoring output will the other Ohio State players be able to pick up the slack?
All of the Buckeyes had better play at a high level in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines are ranked No. 22 in the nation and are 21-7 on the season. They are also 14-1 at home with their only loss being by one point to Purdue on January 9th when the Boilermakers were on a roll.
It will certainly be gut check time for the Ohio State players when they face Michigan. How they respond after the bad loss to Penn State may very well determine if the Buckeyes stay in the hunt for the regular season Big Ten title or not.