The basketball huddles up before the OSU-Illinois game on Nov. 25. Ohio State won 94-67. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Photo Editor
At the start of the season, head coach Chris Holtmann said that his team was a “work in progress.”
Coming off six wins in the month of January and a rise to No. 7 in the AP Top 25 Poll, Holtmann is singing the same tune that warns against complacency. The Buckeyes have navigated adversity on and off the court throughout the 2020-21 season, and Holtmann said this year’s group has maintained a positive energy.
“We’re very much a work in progress — that’s still the case for us — but there’s no doubt this group has been a phenomenal group to coach,” Holtmann said Sunday. “In the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a lot of question marks about our team, it’s been a phenomenal group to coach. The challenge for us is getting better.”
No. 7 Ohio State (14-4, 8-4) capped off a successful month of January with its fifth-largest win over Michigan State in school history, downing the Spartans 79-62 Sunday.
The buildup to the Buckeyes’ most recent victory included wins over three ranked opponents and a pair of three-game winning streaks in the past month.
Sitting in the No. 3 spot in the Big Ten standings, Holtmann emphasized that a lapse in the team’s focus could result in a setback.
“In this league, the moment you feel like you’ve got it figured out or you feel like you are in a certain place, you get humbled really quickly, really quickly,” Holtmann said. “For us, it’s always, it’s always, about focusing on the bricks and not the wall — the daily focus of getting better.”
The positive ending to the successful stretch was not always clear, however.
In the final seconds of a Jan. 19 game against Purdue, the Buckeyes dropped a home bout that ended a three-game winning streak.
Although a letdown performance for a team that was coming off a ranked win against Illinois, the Buckeyes responded with a win against then-No. 10 Wisconsin.
Following the win Jan. 23, graduate forward Seth Towns said the Purdue game served as a learning experience for the Buckeyes.
“That Purdue game — obviously you hate to lose — but it taught us a ton,” Towns said. “We went back to the drawing board, learned a lot from it and brought our new knowledge out to this game.”
Eight days after the heartbreak to Purdue, the Buckeyes were on the verge of dropping a second consecutive home game with Penn State up 8 points in the second half Jan. 27.
But the Buckeyes salvaged the game — a result Holtmann said was a sign of improvement.
“I think that Penn State game and finishing like we did was really, really an important moment for us as a group, because we improved upon some of the things we had not done well the week before,” Holtmann said.
For redshirt senior guard CJ Walker, the focus remains game to game.
One of the most vocal leaders on the team according to Holtmann, Walker said he takes a simplistic approach to each practice and game.
“We don’t worry, pretty much, (about) who we’re playing next,” Walker said. “We just kinda worry about us first, in practice just pushing each other, just doing the right things each and every day and what happens in the game, just play hard as you can, just do everything that you can and we’ll live with the results after that.”
Residing inside the top 10 for the first time since the first week of January in the 2019-20 season, Holtmann said he does not focus on the outside noise.
“What I have said from day one about this group, and I don’t think I’ve come off this, is I love their maturity. We’ve got a group that has a real nice blend of older and young guys, we’ve got talented players, but I love this group,” Holtmann said. “I just feel really good about coaching this group, so that gives me optimism that hopefully we can keep getting better.”
The Buckeyes will continue their journey with a road trip to take on No. 8 Iowa Thursday.
