Ohio State Basketball: Buckeyes must focus on defense and rebounding

The Ohio State basketball team plays Minnesota on Thursday and to end a horrible stretch of basketball, OSU must focus on defense and rebounding.

On Dec. 15, the Ohio State basketball team lost its first game of the season to Minnesota 84-71, falling to 9-1 overall. Since then the Buckeyes are 3-5 as they are 12-6 on the season and have lost five of their last six games.

Looking at the last time the Buckeyes played the Golden Gophers, and the Buckeyes’ last game against Penn State in which they lost 90-76, defensive play and rebounding will be important for Ohio State to get the win against Minnesota on Thursday.

In their game against Minnesota last month, and their last game against Penn State on Saturday, the Buckeyes allowed the most points they allowed in any other games this season.

Against Minnesota in which they allowed the Golden Gophers to scored 84 points and 46 in the second half, the Buckeyes allowed them to shoot 54.4 percent from the field. They also allowed Marcus Carr to drop 35 points on 12-of-17 shooting.

As a team, the Golden Gophers also outrebounded the Buckeyes 40-28.

Then against the Nittany Lions on Saturday, while they were only outrebounded 30-29, they allowed Penn State to shoot 53.7 percent from the field and 47.4 percent from three, on their way to dropping 90 points. They also allowed Penn State’s Lamar Stevens to score 24 points in addition to Myreon Jones’ 20. That’s atrocious defensive play.

Like I mentioned earlier, this a horrific stretch of basketball for the Buckeyes after they were at one point 9-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country. Now, they are not even in the AP Poll.

If Ohio State wants to get back into the NCAA Tournament, then they need to start playing better basketball tonight against the Golden Gophers. There are a lot of things wrong with this team right now, but they must first focus on defensive play and rebounding to try to win some games.