COLUMBUS, Ohio –– Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann expected a down-to-the-wire finish against Indiana on Saturday, and given how many of the Buckeyes’ games have gone this season –– even if mostly in wins –– that outcome would have been far from an astonishment.
Instead, Holtmann’s team gave him a pleasant surprise in the form of a 78-59 result; the second-widest margin of victory for Ohio State against a conference opponent this season.
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It wasn’t an out and out blowout from start to finish, as the Hoosiers proved resilient with several runs to cut the game to single digits, but the Buckeyes always seemed to make the right plays at the right time in response, keeping Indiana just out of striking distance before its collective will eventually broke.
“At times during the season we’ve had a lead, a pretty large one too, and we’ve let it slip away, towards the end of the game especially,” redshirt junior forward Justice Sueing said. “So especially in this game, it was a big emphasis as we began to make the lead larger and larger, coach continued to emphasize to keep playing and really keep them on their heels."
The events of the earlygoing might have foretold the final score, as Ohio State went on a 19-0 run through the middle of the first half to put Indiana well behind the eight-ball.
However, the Hoosiers hung tough, with four different scorers powering an 11-0 run of their own in the waning minutes of the opening period. It was just a six-point game with 1:32 left in the first half, with Indiana threatening to head into the locker room with a much more favorable score than it might have deserved after the slow start.
But Ohio State countered, scoring seven of the final nine points in the half, including the last four on two free throws from redshirt senior point guard CJ Walker and a layup from sophomore forward E.J. Liddell on a fastbreak.
The Buckeyes took a 38-28 lead into halftime, but Indiana was still not done.
Indiana sophomore forward Trayce Jackson-Davis, who finished with 23 points and nine rebounds, scored three buckets in the first five-minutes-and-change to start out the second half –– including two dunks –– to bring the Hoosiers within six and then five points of the Buckeyes with two mini runs.
Walker and the Buckeyes were right there once again though, as Walker bailed Ohio State out with a deep contested 3 with the shot clock running down a few possessions later that pushed the lead back to 10.
“You’re not gonna run away from teams in this league, and you’re certainly not gonna run away from NCAA Tournament teams, like Indiana is, right away,” Holtmann said. “I think over time maybe you have a chance to create some distance. We were fortunate to do that tonight.”
Just a minute earlier, it looked like Indiana would make good on Holtmann’s prediction to keep it close the whole way, but instead, the aforementioned Walker 3 was part of an Ohio State run that broke the game open entirely.
It was the stout defensive play of senior forward Kyle Young that spurred it on, as he sparked back-to-back Buckeye fastbreaks to push the Ohio State advantage to 54-40 with 11:42 left.
Young both forced and corralled an Indiana airball on one possession before pushing an outlet pass up the floor to allow Walker to convert on a layup on the other end.
The next trip down for the Hoosiers, a perimeter trap from Walker and Liddell forced an errant pass into the hands of Young, who quickly got the ball up to his guards once again, leading to a transition hoop for junior guard Duane Washington.
There was no run left in Indiana after that, as the Buckeyes would go on a 10-0 tear a couple minutes later to turn a once-close ballgame into an insurmountable 23-point lead.
“It’s a maturity thing. I think we’ve been OK with that this year, we’ve gotten a little better at having the kind of maturity you need in certain games to be able to stretch leads and win the next possession,” Holtmann said. “But i don’t think we’ve always been great at that.”
It didn’t matter that Jackson-Davis had possibly his best performance in a month, nor that Liddell, Ohio State’s leading scorer, went just 1-for-3 from the field in the second half.
Unlike the team that gave up late second half leads to Northwestern and Purdue earlier in the season, the Buckeyes have routinely distanced themselves from opponents down the stretch during their six-game winning streak; a promising sign for a prospective No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed that seems to keep getting better as the season wears on.
