Ohio State basketball wins at Minnesota for first time since 2014

The Barn has not been kind to the Ohio State basketball program. Coming into Thursday night, they hadn’t won there since 2014. Granted, there had only been three games at the Barn since then, but it’s still not a stat that the Buckeyes were proud of.

That streak ended on Thursday night after Ohio State won 75-64. It was one of those games that the Buckeyes had to win. Minnesota had only won two games in Big Ten play coming into the game. That is still the case after the Buckeyes beat them.

The biggest reason that Chris Holtmann’s squad won this game was because of the domination on the boards, specifically with offensive rebounding. Ohio State had a whopping 20 offensive rebounds in this game. Minnesota had 22 rebounds total. The Buckeyes had 48 total.

E.J. Liddell was fantastic as usual. He joined the 1,000 point club en route to having 23 points. Liddell also added a career-high 15 rebounds and had 5 assists as well. He was the best player on the floor and he played like it. Liddell wasn’t the only one who played well.

Zed Key added 12 points and 8 rebounds of his own. Malaki Branham added 11 early points as well. He was the lead guard after Jamari Wheeler missed the game because of an ankle injury. Branham is really starting to come into his own as the season continues. Kyle Young added a solid 14 off the bench as well.

The Ohio State basketball team has their toughest game yet coming up on Sunday when they travel to Mackey Arena to take on Purdue. They’ll enjoy this win tonight, but they need to be ready to play on Sunday. It’s going to be a lot harder to rebound like this against the Boilermakers.

Any win on the road in this conference is a good win. It’s good to see the Buckeyes not play to the level of their competition for once.