The Ohio State University Men’s Basketball team conjoins together to talk about what to do in the game against Illinois on Feb 14. Ohio State lost 56-63. Credit: Cori Wade | Assistant Photo Editor
The Big Ten is teeming with formidable inside-outside tandems this season, and Ohio State has matched up with mixed results.
The Buckeyes split two games against Maryland senior guard Anthony Cowan and sophomore forward Jalen Smith, but got the better of Michigan senior guard Zavier Simpson and senior center Jon Teske in both meetings.
Minnesota redshirt sophomore guard Marcus Carr and sophomore center Daniel Oturu gave Ohio State fits, as two of the top seven scorers in the conference bested the Buckeyes twice in five weeks.
Enter No. 23 Illinois (20-9, 12-6 Big Ten) and its own edition: sophomore guard Ayo Dosunmu and freshman center Kofi Cockburn, who will undoubtedly take a page from the Golden Gopher playbook to try and knock No. 19 Ohio State (20-9, 10-8) off its warpath Thursday.
“In this league, they just keep coming,” Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann said. “There’s never a break.”
The Buckeyes have won eight of 10, but the Fighting Illini are hot on the heels of four straight wins of their own, including a six-point upset against then-No. 9 Penn State that saw 24 points from Dosunmu just one week after an injury.
It was the first performance in a four-game stretch in which Dosunmu put up 20 points per game on better-than-53-percent shooting to coincide with Illinois’ winning surge, with his 16.4-point season average at No. 5 in the conference.
The 6-foot-5 guard has improved on a freshman campaign that earned him an All-Big Ten honorable mention, and the addition of Cockburn –– the No. 43 recruit in 2019 –– has helped Illinois make a dramatic one-year shift.
Cockburn, a 290-pound 7-footer from Kingston, Jamaica, is the No. 14 scorer in the Big Ten at 13.6 points per game, and the team is 19-4 when he scores in double figures.
“I never coached against Shaq,” Holtmann said. “I’d have to reflect back on –– I’m not sure a guy that is that specimen I have coached against. I’ve coached against some big bodies, but 7-1, 290 is probably pretty rarified air.”
He’s coming off a six-block performance against Indiana, and he’s riding a season-high six straight games of 10 or more points.
The Illinois big man figures to be another challenge for Ohio State junior forward Kaleb Wesson defensively, though opposing five-men have scored less than seven points per game on average in the Buckeyes’ past three games.
Ohio State may not have a scoring guard as prolific as Dosunmu, but the Buckeye backcourt has been crucial to its recent success.
Redshirt junior guard CJ Walker and sophomore guards Duane Washington and Luther Muhammad have each been punching above their weight, combining to average 43.3 points per game in the past three games, which accounts for more than 56 percent of Ohio State’s scoring in the period. By contrast, the trio’s season point totals make up just 37 percent of the Buckeye offense.
“I don’t really think anything changed. I just think we stayed committed,” senior forward Andre Wesson said. “Obviously you’re going to have ups and downs during the season. I think the biggest thing is how you handle those downs.”
Illinois has the No. 1 scoring defense in the conference during Big Ten play, giving up just 63.2 points per game, but Ohio State’s 76.75 average in the past four games is its highest in any four-game stretch since December.
Illinois is just one game behind the top seed in the Big Ten Tournament if the regular season ended early, and Ohio State is slotted at No. 7 with two games to go.
But the Fighting Illini are just two games ahead of the Buckeyes, and a home win in Columbus would go a long way toward closing the gap and attaining a higher spot in the end-of-season shuffle.
“There won’t be a break in the Big Ten Tournament,” Holtmann said. “Whoever we play there will be an outstanding team. Whoever we play in the NCAA Tournament will be a really good team, so that’s the reality moving forward.”
Ohio State and Illinois are scheduled for a 7 p.m. tipoff Thursday.
