At halftime of Ohio State's game last Sunday against Purdue, the Buckeyes were trailing by 12 points. In the locker room, Thad Matta had a simple message for his team.
“We didn’t want to settle offensively, we wanted to get the ball moving, we wanted to attack and we wanted to make them defend us," senior forward Sam Thompson said following the game. "We didn’t want to bail them out with a 3."
Ohio State was trailing the Boilermakers 35-23 at the half. The Buckeyes were shooting just 26.9 percent from the field and were only 2 of 10 from behind the 3-point line. Essentially, Ohio State was settling for outside jumpers and not attacking Purdue's shot-blocking big men. It played right into the hands of the Boilermakers.
Things changed in the second half, though, after Matta's message to the team. The Buckeyes started attacking.
Ohio State shot 54.5 percent from the floor in the second half and only attempted two shots from behind the 3-point line. The Buckeyes mounted a furious comeback and went ahead for good on a driving layup by freshman guard D'Angelo Russell where he took the ball right into the chest of the leading shotblocker in the Big Ten, Purdue's A.J. Hammons.
Ohio State wound up winning the game 65-61. It appeared as if it were a good sign of things to come.
But in the Buckeyes' next game, Wednesday on the road at Penn State, they fell in love with that jump shot again in the first half. They shot just 35.5 percent from the field and were 1 for 8 from 3-point range as they trailed a lowly Nittany Lions team, 30-29.
After Penn State had stretched its lead out to nine early in the second half, it appeared the switch flipped again for Ohio State. The Buckeyes stopped shooting jumpers that weren't falling and went at the basket. They either got layups or got fouled, and sometimes both.
Russell again was the catalyst, scoring 19 of his game-high 28 points in the second half. Once Ohio State had gotten the Nittany Lions on their heels defensively by attacking the rim, Russell made all four of his second-half 3-pointers including a stretch where he made three straight. After he got a couple of his shots to fall from the perimeter, they started falling for the other guys, too.
The Buckeyes' aggressiveness is all in the numbers. Ohio State has shot 71 free throws in its last two games, while its opponents have attempted just 37. The Buckeyes have made just 48 of those attempts (68 percent), but it's pretty clear they've been more assertive over these last two games with 50 of those attempts coming in the second halves.
When Ohio State does that, it looks like a pretty solid basketball team.
"It comes down to two things and that’s execution and toughness. We know that if we are the tougher basketball team we’re going to win the game," redshirt freshman guard Kam Williams said prior to the game against Penn State. "To do that, we have to execute for 40 minutes and when we execute the film and the stats show that our offense and our defense is second to none."
