Ohio State basketball: Offense fails once again in loss to Illinois

The Ohio State basketball team was coming off their first win in six games on Saturday after beating Iowa. It looked like they may have finally found their offense after scoring 90+ points in that game. That was clearly fool’s gold based on what we saw on Tuesday.

Against Illinois, the Buckeyes barely were able to crack 60 points as a team, and that was because of a garbage three at the end. They were down by as many as 17 and fell to the Illini 68-60. It was an embarrassing offensive effort from a team that was incredibly prolific on that end early in the year.

The biggest reason why the Ohio State basketball team can’t score is simple; the half-court offense is awful. When they don’t get fast break points, which the Buckeyes scored zero, they can’t create enough offense. There’s no movement of the ball in the half-court.

Chris Holtmann’s squad managed just a pitiful 7 assists as a team in this one. The ball stuck with one person too long on these possessions. There was way too much dribbling to try to get a shot instead of passing the ball around to find an open shot.

Holtmann needs to start calling more plays in the half-court. That’s the only way that they are going to be able to get enough points to win games. If there isn’t going to be ball movement with this team, there has to be player movement to open up space for some dribble drives.

I don’t see how this team wins many more games when they play like this. I know that this game was on the road and it’s tough to play on the road in the Big Ten, but this team is floundering right now. Holtmann clearly has no idea how to fix this team.

It’s starting to look like this is a lost season. I feel pretty comfortable saying this team won’t be in the NCAA Tournament this year.