Sean McNeil: Ohio State doesn't 'need anybody else that’s not in that locker room'
IOWA CITY, Iowa – It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Sean McNeil would feel a little disgruntled. A sniper for hire brought in from West Virginia to provide shooting and experience in his final season of college basketball, the Ohio State guard has been one of the team’s most consistent – if not prolific – scorers.
He’s also been recently bumped from the starting lineup, not necessarily because of what he’s doing but because of the opportunity it provides for another deserving player who will be part of the program’s future. So for the last two games, McNeil has come off the bench to make way for freshman Roddy Gayle.
The move hasn’t changed Ohio State’s fortunes. The Buckeyes will go to Purdue on Sunday having lost seven straight and 12 of their last 13 games, a stretch that began with their first meeting against the Boilermakers on Jan. 5. Six guaranteed games remain on the schedule, but McNeil said the answers to turning things around exist within the program.
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And that doesn’t mean reinstating him as a starter. It’s bigger than him.
“We have the right pieces,” McNeil told The Dispatch after scoring a team-high 20 points in Thursday night’s 92-75 loss at Iowa. “We don’t need anybody else that’s not in that locker room for this year but for years going forward too. They’ve got the right guys and they’ll continue to get good players and for years to come they’ll be completely fine.”
The problem is that right now, they’re not. At 11-15 overall and 3-12 in the Big Ten, Ohio State looks bound for its first losing season since it went 14-16 in the 2003-04 season. The seven-game losing streak is the longest since the 1997-98 Buckeyes dropped 17 straight. These Buckeyes became the first in program history to lose five straight games all by single digits but more recently have lost their last two games by 21 and 17 points, respectively.
For the first time in coach Chris Holtmann’s six seasons, Ohio State will need to win the Big Ten tournament in order to participate in March Madness. It will need to win at least a few more games to merit NIT consideration. The immediate outlook is bleak, but both McNeil and Holtmann said after the loss that they aren’t seeing signs that this season’s struggles are creating a culture where losing is acceptable for the younger players.
“There will certainly be a lot of education that will need to happen through this process when the offseason rolls around,” Holtmann said. “That’ll be the approach we’ll take, but I think the biggest thing we’re trying to evaluate right now is do guys continue to compete? Do they continue to play? Are they playing the right way and the way they’ve been coached? That’s what we’re looking for.”
McNeil said that continues to take place. With about six minutes left, the veteran said he told the Buckeyes that they needed to finish the game strong despite being down by a game-high 28 points. The message: “finish our way … and play Ohio State basketball down the stretch.”
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With the final outcome decided and both teams still playing primary rotation players, the Buckeyes outscored the Hawkeyes 15-4 in the final 5:06.
“I liked how we finished the game in the last 5-6 minutes in terms of competing” Holtmann said. “I thought we competed the last 5-6 minutes when it could’ve been something where you just hang your head and quit, and I did not see that with our guys. I felt like we for the most part played the right way.”
The problem was that the stretches where they didn’t proved to be insurmountable. A 12-0 Iowa run in the final 2:20 of the first half gave the Hawkeyes an 11-point halftime lead and Ohio State trailed by double digits for the entire second half. The details change, but some version of that stretch seems to hamper the Buckeyes in each game.
Holtmann said he’s watching for signs of players quitting and not seeing them. McNeil said the same, pointing to the end of the Iowa game as evidence.
“As you can imagine, it’s not easy to keep everybody on the same page when you’re going through a tough stretch like this,” he said. “It’s one thing I can give credit to every single person in the locker room, player and staff, is keeping everybody as together as we possibly can. We are still together.”
They’re just not winning. With so many losses, does this team know how to win against high-level competition?
“In the locker room, from 1-15, everybody hates losing,” McNeil said. “It doesn’t need to be said that this isn’t the norm and won’t continue to happen. There’s too many good players.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Losses piling up, but Sean McNeil still believes in OSU's locker room
