INDIANAPOLIS — Shortly after the final horn sounded and Ohio State celebrated its 79-75 win over Penn State on Thursday in the 7-10 matchup of the Big Ten tournament, Buckeyes freshman point guard JaQuan Lyle headed toward the tunnel before he was stopped by a team spokesman. Lyle wasn’t going to visit his teammates in the locker room just yet. He first had to do a sit down interview at the Big Ten Network stage.
There wasn’t much of a doubt who was going to get the air time after this win. Sure, junior forward Marc Loving and his team-high 24 points had a shot — and nobody would dispute Loving’s impact on Ohio State’s win — but Lyle dominated the Nittany Lions in all phases Thursday night and was simply too much to handle down the stretch.
“That’s just being a player,” Lyle said in the locker room afterward. “Growing up playing in the park you develop a craftiness and when you get rolling you just feel like nobody can guard you.”
Penn State certainly struggled on this night.
Lyle scored 22 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and dished out five assists in Ohio State’s win becoming just the fourth player in Big Ten tournament history to go for at least 20 points, 10 rebounds and five assists. He scored 16 of those points in the game’s second half, eight of which came in the final 2 minutes, 43 seconds of a tightly-contested game.
With the Buckeyes clinging to a two-point lead late in the game, Lyle came off a high ball screen and finished through contact inside to put Ohio State ahead by four with 2:43 to play. Then, after a stop on the other end of the floor, the Buckeyes ran nearly the same play and Lyle again finished through a Penn State defender at the rim to extend the lead to six.
Some key free throws down the stretch and that was all she wrote.
“Just making plays for my teammates and whenever I make plays for my teammates when I make that next drive they can’t help because they don’t know what I’m going to do,” Lyle said. “That leaves me one-on-one and nine times out of 10 that’s not going to turn out good for the defender.”
That certainly doesn’t sound like a freshman playing in his first Big Ten tournament. And without Lyle’s massive contributions, Ohio State gets upset by a gritty Penn State team, which actually led by three points at halftime thanks to a 7-for-12 effort from 3-point range.
But the Buckeyes, led by Lyle and Loving, came out firing in the second half and turned up the defensive intensity to make sure there would be no upset.
“They were knocking down shots, shooting crazy from the 3,” Loving said. “At halftime we just had to make an adjustment and try to make them uncomfortable. Activity on the ball and trying to disrupt their timing on offense was a pretty big thing for us.”
Added backup point guard A.J. Harris, whose defensive presence disrupted Penn State star Shep Garner: “Coach had to make a change and we just wanted to get in there and mess with them a little bit, just affect him, affect their offense a little bit.”
The win was one Ohio State simply had to have to keep its slim NCAA tournament hopes alive. The Buckeyes need to make a run here in Indianapolis for that to occur and that obviously couldn’t have happened without a win over Penn State.
But now things get much more difficult as Ohio State will face No. 2 seed Michigan State on Friday. The Buckeyes and Spartans are familiar with one another being that they’ve played twice in the last two weeks, but both of those matchups went heavily in Michigan State’s favor.
Ohio State wasn’t near perfect in the win over Penn State, but it pretty much needs to be to have any chance against the Spartans.
“We can’t do that tomorrow,” freshman center Daniel Giddens said. “We’re playing one of the best teams in the nation and we can’t do that tomorrow.”
Added coach Thad Matta: “They are a great team. They just, they pose so many problems. But with that said, and I told these guys, we have to play better than we did the first two games [against Michigan State].”
A performance like Ohio State got from Lyle certainly wouldn’t hurt either.
