Sean McNeil: Ohio State needed to 'cut the water off' after taking lead on Minnesota
Very little had gone right for Ohio State on Thursday night at Value City Arena.
Yes, the Buckeyes were playing a Minnesota team that, fully healthy, had shown recent signs of life that belied an 0-4 start in Big Ten play. The Golden Gophers came to Ohio State fresh off a three-point road loss to Wisconsin and a two-point home overtime loss to Nebraska, took the lead only 2:37 into the game and looked bent on holding it for the duration against the Buckeyes when the hosts finally mounted a charge.
When Brice Sensabaugh finished off a three-point play with 13:06 left, it gave Ohio State its first lead since the score was 2-0. The crowd of 11,202 was finally stirring, and the Buckeyes had the chance to assert themselves, ahead 51-50.
Instead, Minnesota put together a 10-0 run in the span of 3:09, flipped the game once again and created enough separation to earn a 70-67 win at Value City Arena and send the Buckeyes to a third straight single-digit loss. The run left the Golden Gophers praising their leadership and the Buckeyes questioning their own toughness when the going gets tough.
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“As soon as we got over the hump, that’s when we’ve got to man up and cut the water off,” Ohio State’s Sean McNeil said. “We can’t let them see the light of day again as far as taking the lead. It’s one stop after another. If they come down and score, then that play is done. We’ve got to focus on, we’re gonna go get a bucket, then we’re gonna go get a stop. We have to do that for multiple possessions.”
With the lead at 51-50, McNeil actually stole the ball in the paint from Pharrel Payne to give Ohio State a chance to extend its lead. Instead, center Zed Key, back in action after missing Sunday’s Maryland game with a shoulder injury, was called for an offensive foul while battling with Payne at the other end to give the ball back to the Gophers.
Payne scored down low, reclaiming the lead with 12:10 left, and Minnesota wouldn’t give it up again. After entering the night ranked No. 1 nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, Ohio State went to Key and freshman Brice Sensabaugh, respectively, on its next two possessions.
Both were blocked. In between, Sensabaugh lost Taurus Samuels for a 3-pointer, and when Dawson Garcia scored off his own miss with 10:38 left the Buckeyes called timeout. Minnesota led 57-51, and Ohio State’s offensive drought would still continue. After Sensabaugh’s three-point play, the Buckeyes didn’t score again until Key connected on a hook shot in the paint with 7:23 left.
It amounted to a drought of 5:42 that, despite some late-game theatrics, proved to be the death knell. On its home court, Ohio State missed five shots and turned it over twice while the Golden Gophers pulled away.
Minnesota coach Ben Johnson credited fifth-year player Samuels, fourth-year players Jamison Battle and Ta’Lon Cooper and third-year player Dawson Garcia for their leadership to right things when the Buckeyes were making their run.
“We have great leadership,” he said. “I credit our captains on that. In timeouts they were constantly talking about the right stuff to keep the group connected. You’ve got to have that response and that toughness on the road. It goes back to, you hit adversity, you can’t blink.
“You’ve got to think about next play and rely on your defense to carry you through and then eventually we ran good offense and were able to get points on the board.”
Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann said that once the Buckeyes had the lead, they lost it due to defensive errors and poor shot selection.
“We’ve got to get a lot better,” he said. “This was our worst game offensively in terms of shot selection. That had not been an issue up to this point.”
Suddenly, it’s one of several issues seemingly plaguing the Buckeyes. Seven days earlier, they led the nation’s No. 1 team with less than a minute remaining only to take a last-second home loss to Purdue. Now, Ohio State has plummeted out of the top 25 and toward the bottom of the Big Ten standings with a three-game losing streak.
The defense has been the primary culprit, dropping from No. 65 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency entering the Purdue game to No. 97 after this loss. Once again, Ohio State couldn’t get a stop when it needed one, but this time the offense struggled at a rate not seen all season.
Thursday night, it all added up to what is the worst KenPom loss of the Holtmann era. Minnesota entered the game ranked No. 193, topping last year’s loss to No. 155 Nebraska and, yes the NCAA Tournament loss to Oral Roberts (a No. 15 seed, but the No. 151 team per KenPom).
Up next: a road rematch with Rutgers.
“Obviously we have a short turnaround so we can’t sulk on this one,” McNeil said. “There was a decent amount of mistakes we made. Give credit to them. They’re a really good team, but we didn’t play up to our standards tonight, offensively or defensively. Take the time that’s reasonable to figure out how to get better from this loss then focus on go winning at Rutgers.”
Ohio State had won 16 of its last 18 home games against Minnesota.
Ohio State suffers through rare off night offensively
It’s been a while since the Buckeyes have had this poor of a shooting performance. In its four losses, Minnesota had allowed Big Ten teams to shoot 49.6% from the field.
That was the worst defense statistically in the Big Ten, and it was against that challenge that Ohio State finished 24 for 64 (37.5%) from the floor.
“It was our worst offensive game of the year,” Holtmann said. “Give them credit. I thought them going under ball screens bothered us.”
It wasn’t just the worst shooting performance of the season for the Buckeyes. The last time Ohio State shot this poorly was a 36.2% effort (21 for 58) in a loss at Maryland on Feb. 27, 2022, a defeat that knocked them out of Big Ten title contention.
Minnesota had plenty to do with that, but Ohio State also missed more than its usual share of shots in and around the paint. The Buckeyes were 18 for 51 (35.3%) from two, also their lowest mark of the season.
“They had to go as much as possible through us to get to the rim,” Johnson said. “We didn’t want to get beat on direct line drives, plays at the rim. Be able to wall-up when we could, but you’ve got to fight force with force. We couldn’t let them just get downhill so we talked and worked a lot with just, you’ve got to hold your ground and know they’re going to bring action to you.”
Asked what needed fixed, McNeil said, “Our offense wasn’t clicking today. From the jump we didn’t really seem like we wanted to play or be out there. Energy, being in tune with the task at hand.”
Did Bruce Thornton have a clean block at the end?
Despite everything that had gone wrong, Ohio State managed to rally late, overcome a six-point deficit with 50.1 seconds left and pull even at 67 on a pair of Sensabaugh free throws with 8.6 seconds remaining. Minnesota called timeout and drew up a play Johnson said they had unsuccessfully tried to run in their loss to Wisconsin.
This time, it worked – sort of. As Cooper got the ball on the right wing, Ohio State’s Justice Sueing slipped and fell as he attempted to stay between the guard and the basket, giving him what looked to be a wide-open drive to the rim. Instead, as he got there, freshman Buckeyes guard Bruce Thornton came from seemingly nowhere, launched his 6-2, 215-pound frame in the air and appeared to connect with all ball for a clean block.
Instead, Roger Ayers – the same official who missed the sideline out-of-bounds violation on Tanner Holden’s buzzer-beating, game-winning shot against Rutgers – whistled Thornton for a foul to send Cooper to the line with 1.7 seconds remaining.
A 51.2% free-throw shooter on the season, Cooper missed the first as the crowd roared and Johnson called timeout. After everyone regrouped, he hit the second one for the game-winning point.
“He made the one that mattered,” Johnson said.
Whether he should have been at the line or not was up for debate. Johnson said he saw Sueing fall but didn’t see what happened at the rim.
“I just know there was a foul called and we got to the line,” he said. “I saw a guy on the floor and heard the whistle. I was watching at the rim because I thought he was gonna score it and then I heard the whistle, I’m thinking free throws.”
Regardless of the call, Holtmann said the final outcome was justified.
“Looked like a clean block, but we shouldn’t have had ourselves in that position,” he said. “Officials made the call.
“We weren’t ever really in this game in terms of feeling like we had imposed our will. In some ways, if we’d have won it, it would’ve been a disservice because I’m not sure that we deserved it. They did a great job clawing back, our guys did, and executing late, but the reality is I’m not sure we earned this one if we’d have won it.”
Chris Holtmann second-guesses usage of Zed Key
Ohio State’s game plan against Purdue was irrevocably altered in the opening four minutes when Key departed with a left shoulder sprain that would keep him out of Sunday’s loss at Maryland. The injury wasn’t severe, however, and Key was able to play against the Golden Gophers with a brace on the left shoulder.
In 29:41 off the bench, Key finished with 10 points on 5 of 7 shooting and pulled down eight rebounds, but he finished with four of Ohio State’s nine turnovers.
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“We obviously had a little bit of lack of continuity with Zed wasn’t able to practice the last couple days,” Holtmann said. “Looking back, I think I made a mistake playing him too long. I shouldn’t have played him as long as I did, but it was our poorest offensive outing really in quite some time, certainly this year.”
Third-year wing Gene Brown III, playing in his fifth game this season, made his first start of the year and played 8:12, finishing with 2 points and one rebound. Freshman Felix Okpara, who played 30:10 against Purdue and started but was plagued with foul trouble at Maryland, was on the court for a season-low 6:31 against the Golden Gophers.
He had two rebounds, two blocks and a steal.
Quotable
“Sometimes we might get too caught up in, ‘I let my man score this last possession’ or we gave up two buckets in a row so our confidence is low on the defensive end. All really easy and fixable things.” – McNeil
“I’ve known (Holtmann’s) team since the Butler days. They play so hard. They’re so physical on both sides of the ball and our challenge was to come in here and match that physicality from the start. I thought the first four minutes of both halves was going to be really telling from our team if we were up for the challenge, because they’re a tough, hard-nosed, gritty group. I thought we rose. That was huge to our mentality and psyche. We had to make it a football game. We had to go out there and embrace contact. We had to play with physicality. We couldn’t have any back-down, and we had to step up to the challenge and I thought we did that.” – Johnson
“We’re obviously not guarding great. We’re not playing well enough together. This was our poorest offensive game of the year so there’s a lot to clean up there.” – Holtmann
“To me, it’s basketball. Teams go on runs and teams lose. You’ve just got to figure out what to during that time of adversity. This is our first time facing adversity so it should be good for us to learn how to get up out of this and really stick together as a team.” – Isaac Likekele
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State Buckeyes falter after taking lead on Minnesota
