Coming into Friday night, the Ohio State basketball team had yet to play a road game. They spent the first six games of the season mostly beating up on bad competition at home. The lone exception was a one-point victory over Notre Dame, which was a solid win.
Playing Pitt on Friday night gave the Ohio State Buckeyes an opportunity for a quality road victory. While Pittsburgh has struggled a bit to start the year, beating a P4 opponent on the road would not be a bad thing to have on Ohio State's resume. It looked like that wasn't going to happen early, though.
In the first half, the Buckeyes scored just 24 points. The offense was disjointed, and it looked like a blowout loss was incoming. Instead, they fought back to take the lead, holding a two-point lead with 3.7 seconds left. Yet, they lost on a buzzer-beating three, losing a heartbreaker to the Panthers for the second straight year.
Ohio State basketball team loses a heartbreaker to Pitt
A game-winning three by Damarco Minor left the Buckeyes with their first loss of the season. They ruined a great effort from Devin Royal, who led Ohio State in scoring with 22 points. Bruce Thornton added a double-double, scoring 18 points and grabbing a career-high 13 rebounds.
The inability of the Buckeyes to put the ball in the hoop in the first half is what doomed this team. Had they been better in the first 20 minutes, they wouldn't have had to come back from such a large deficit. It was their first terrible offensive outing of the year.
Losing this game 67-66 in heartbreaking fashion is tough. Ohio State fans hope this isn't a harbinger of things to come on Saturday afternoon during The Game. Still, the Buckeyes have two more chances at getting quality non-conference wins.
Ohio State takes on West Virginia and North Carolina. Winning both of those games would give them a good opportunity to be ranked once those games are over. Jake Diebler needs to get his guys to play better. That might be tough without Juni Mobley, who sprained his ankle in this game and was in a boot on the bench.