Ohio State basketball: How to stop late-game slides

The Ohio State basketball team won its second consecutive game after losing a big second-half lead. It’s a troubling trend that seems to be plaguing Chris Holtmann’s team in conference play. They got lucky they won both of these games if we’re being honest.

There are ways that the Buckeyes can fix this. Perhaps the biggest way to fix it is to stop going into a shell on offense once they have a big lead. It seems that once the Buckeyes get a 10+ point lead late in the game, they’re more focused on draining the clock than scoring buckets.

Chris Holtmann needs to get his team to maintain their aggression throughout the game. Keep trying to score buckets in transition because the half-court offense stalls out a lot in these moments. They often dribble or pass for 25 seconds before taking a bad shot at the end of the shot clock.

A way to make the half-court offense more effective is to run more pick-and-rolls instead of so many pick-and-pops. E.J. Liddell almost exclusively pops out to the three-point line when he sets a screen. That allows the defenders to switch too easily and doesn’t give anyone a mismatch. Kyle Young has started doing this too.

If Young would roll to the hoop occasionally, he would give the ball-handler another option to pass and it would clear space on the perimeter for a really good three-point shooter to spot up. It also just breaks up the predictability of the offense. All of these things would lead to more points.

I’m sure Holtmann will be studying film to find out what he can do better to keep his team from these late-game collapses. If they do that in March, a team is going to eliminate them from the postseason. They have to find a way to close games better.