Ohio State lost a contest to the Washington Huskies on the road Sunday night, 81-74. In the ballgame, the Buckeyes struggled to shoot the ball, just shooting 42.9% from the field and 31.8% on 3-pointers. The Buckeyes' leading scorer was Bruce Thornton, building off his great season so far, scored 28 points on 9/17 shooting. The Buckeyes' second leading scorer was Amare Bynum, the impressive freshman scored 20 points and had one of his best games of the season
Ohio State struggled defensively stopping Huskies Zoom Diallo (22 points) and Hannes Steinbach (21 points, 9 rebounds). As a team, Washington shot 50% from the field and only had 7 turnovers. The Buckeyes will need to force more turnovers and get more stops moving forward
The Significance Moving Forward
The Buckeyes now sit 11-5 on the season with a 3-3 record in conference play in the Big 10. That puts them 2.5 games back of the lead and 10th in the conference. They will need to play more efficient basketball moving forward, and some of the younger guys will need to grow into their respective roles quickly.
The expectation will be on the older guys, Bruce Thornton and Devin Royal, to continue to lead this team, and the younger guys, Amare Bynum, John Mobley, to see improvement as the building blocks of the program moving forward
It will be pivotal how the Buckeyes finish the season in Big 10 conference play with two home games vs UCLA and Minnesota coming up before their rivalry game against top ranked Michigan in Ann Arbor on January 23rd.
A few losses in the month of January could quickly see the Ohio State Buckeyes spiral out of a chance to make the NCAA Tournament, exactly like what has happened in each of the last three years.