Ohio State Men’s Basketball head coach Chris Holtmann watches his team during the Ohio State-Illinois State game on Nov. 25. Ohio State won 94-67. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Photo Editor
After a soul-crushing, come-from-behind loss to Purdue Wednesday, the Buckeyes showed their resilience with a win over No. 10 Wisconsin Saturday — their fourth win over a top-15 team this season.
No. 15 Ohio State (12-4, 6-4 Big Ten) was able to secure a wire-to-wire 74-62 victory over No. 10 Wisconsin (12-4, 6-3 Big Ten) avenging Wednesday’s loss. Graduate forward Seth Towns pointed to the Purdue loss as a learning experience that helped propel them in their win over Wisconsin Saturday.
“That Purdue game, obviously you hate to lose, but it taught us a ton,” Towns said Saturday. “We went back to the drawing board and learned a lot from and brought a new knowledge out to this game.”
Ohio State’s loss to Purdue was the result of poor execution down the stretch that ultimately led to a game-winning 3-pointer from freshman guard Jaden Ivey with five seconds remaining in the game.
Head coach Chris Holtmann pointed to coaching as a reason for Ohio State’s second half collapse Wednesday and blamed himself for the loss.
“I think all-in-all what we learned was we did not execute defensively or offensively down the stretch and that’s my fault,” Holtmann said. “I think there were plenty of plays in the game where we got outworked.”
The Buckeye coach said Wednesday’s loss made him lose out on sleep in the days leading up to Ohio State’s meeting with Wisconsin.
“I told them, I said ‘I hadn’t slept in three days’ just because you feel that as a coach,” Holtmann said. “They came back the next day ready to work and had really good preparation here last night for this team.”
Against Wisconsin, the Badgers were able to cut the Ohio State 13-point second-half lead to just four points with 4:40 remaining in the contest — thanks to a trio of threes from redshirt senior forward Aleem Ford.
However, this time around the Buckeyes were able to stymie the Wisconsin run and closed the game with a 12-4 run.
As the Buckeyes flipped the script on their typical late-game struggles, Holtmann pointed to the team’s ability to learn from their defeats and turn them into triumphs.
“[They are] a really, really engaged group and they’ve bounced back from tough losses very well,” Holtmann said. “They’ve come to work, they’re competitive, they feel losses.”
Sophomore forward E.J. Liddell also had a bounce back performance against the Badgers, after a forgettable night against the Boilermakers.
Liddell turned in a 20-point and 7-rebound performance Saturday and attributed his success to being more confident against Wisconsin than he was against the Boilermakers.
“I feel like I was more aggressive on the offensive end,” Liddell said. “I felt like we were a lot more connected today than we were in our last game.”
The Buckeyes are yet to lose back-to-back games this season and have beat their opponents by an average of 16.5 points in contests following a loss.
Ohio State is also 4-0 against top-15 teams — beating them by an average of over 10 points.
Holtmann pointed to his team’s desire to triumph over the best competition put in front of them as reason for their stellar record against top-ranked teams.
“It’s a competitive group that’s hungry to play well and to beat the caliber teams that we’re gonna play,” Holtmann said.
As the Buckeyes have dominated top-tier teams this year, Holtmann said that these are the wins they ultimately want to achieve — especially with the season being played during a pandemic.
“I do think you want your players to celebrate, to your point, the wins more this year than ever,” Holtmann said. “You want to see big smiles on your players’ faces because tomorrow morning we’re gonna wake up and get tested at eight in the morning and we’re gonna go through that routine and they’re not gonna have a chance to see their families on a regular basis. So you really do want your guys to enjoy it.”
