It’s a good thing the Ohio State basketball team played a very late game on Saturday night because nobody wanted to watch how poor things went against Northwestern on the road for the Buckeyes in a 83-58 loss.
There’s no way around it. This team is regressing as the season goes on and you have to wonder where anyone associated with the program will look for answers. OSU was never really in the game, heading into the locker room down by 11 points, and it got much worse in the second half.
The defense lacked effort and the offense had far too many 1:1 isolation and high degree of difficulty shots without any sense of knowing how to run its offensive sets.
There’s really not a lot of ways to analyze how this game unfolded other than the calling a spade a spade. This game looked more like a low level division I team going against a top seed in the NCAA tournament, with Ohio State being on the wrong end of it.
The Wildcats used a great defensive effort (despite being one of the worst defensive teams in the conference) to set the tone. The Buckeyes shot just 34.1% from the field while yielding 57.7% to Northwestern.
Bruce Thornton led the Buckeyes with 18 points. Roddy Gayle Jr. also had double figures with 15 points, but none of that really matters.
Final from Evanston.
OSU: 58
NU: 83The Buckeyes are back in action at home Tuesday night 7 PM ET vs No. 10 Illinois. pic.twitter.com/sGVRsLJ4y4
— Ohio State Hoops 🌰 (@OhioStateHoops) January 28, 2024
With the loss, Ohio State’s overall record falls to 13-7 and the conference record goes the wrong way at 3-6. We’ll do it all again on Tuesday when OSU will try to look like a competent basketball team against Illinois in the Schott on Tuesday.
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