Ohio State head coach Thad Matta was busy during halftime of Tuesday’s game against Northwestern. It wasn’t all about Xs and Os, though, and trying to figure out why the Buckeyes struggled mightily offensively and shot just 35 percent from the field against the Wildcats.
This was a different kind of halftime speech.
“We had a long discussion at halftime, everybody kind of got an earful,” Matta said. “I just kind of went from guy-to-guy.”
There wasn’t an immediate response by Ohio State, but the Buckeyes got Matta’s hint as they outscored the upset-minded Wildcats by 15 points in the second half to earn a 71-63 win.
“I feel like our pace on offense was very lackluster. We weren’t really cutting hard; we weren’t really flowing,” said sophomore center Trevor Thompson, who scored 12 points and grabbed nine rebounds. “I feel like the biggest thing was we just had to wake up and what Coach was saying was we just had to lose ourselves in playing for Ohio State and we have to lose ourselves as a team.
“I feel like in the second half we did a really good job of having fun, enjoying ourselves and playing as a team.”
After Northwestern’s lead grew to nine at 48-39, Ohio State responded with a 9-0 run to quickly get back into things with just over eight minutes to play, and from there it was all Buckeyes. JaQuan Lyle’s 3-pointer from the wing put Ohio State ahead 59-56 with 3:39 to play and the Buckeyes made 12 free throws in the final 2:40 to seal the game.
“We were just telling each other they’re going to fall, just we have faith in one another and we were never going to quit,” said junior forward Marc Loving, who finished with 15 points and five assists. “We didn’t feel like, at one point in the game, it was unreachable for us to tie the game up and take the lead, but we just had to stick together and I just credit that to everyone on the team having extreme confidence in one another.”
A loss to Northwestern would have been a disaster. The Wildcats are reeling in Big Ten play and Ohio State — with its NCAA tournament hopes hanging by a thread — could not afford a loss to a team it is better than. The Buckeyes have three opportunities for signature wins to close out the regular-season, but they first need to get there unblemished.
Credit Matta for making some key decisions in the second half that changed the way this game went, too. First, he opted to use a 1-2-2 three-quarter court zone press after made baskets and dead balls that allowed Ohio State to speed Northwestern up and it created several turnovers. The Buckeyes have shown this at times this season, but Tuesday night was by far the most effective it had been all year.
Secondly, Matta sat Jae’Sean Tate on the bench for the final 9:24 of the game despite the fact Ohio State’s unquestioned leader had 10 points and seven rebounds and was quite effective. Matta decided to stick with the guys who brought the Buckeyes back and it worked.
That, coupled with some timely shots by Ohio State, allowed the Buckeyes to avoid disaster and win a tightly-contested game — something they hadn’t been able to do against Maryland and Wisconsin.
All five starters finished in double-figures for Ohio State as Lyle finished with 16 and Keita Bates-Diop added 11 to go along with Loving, Tate and Thompson.
“We’ve practiced so hard for the last three or four days leading up to this game. We just worked too hard to not go out here and give it our all,” Loving said. “There’s really no other answer for that other than our preparation for this game was so high that it just had to pay off.”
Northwestern is not the caliber of Maryland or Wisconsin, but the Wildcats are not a pushover. It was big for Ohio State to pull out a closely contested game even though it didn’t play particularly well for nearly 30 minutes.
The Buckeyes will take that, and now hope to build on that going forward as the regular-season winds down.
“We needed it. I think this was a tremendous win for us,” Matta said. “It wasn’t pretty at times, but we’re trying to find some constants with this team and hopefully we can find that channel and stop channel surfing on a nightly basis.”
