Ohio State started the second half of Saturday’s game against Fairleigh Dickinson on a 16-2 run. The Buckeyes came out of the locker room and were clicking on all cylinders. There were 3-pointers, forced turnovers that led to dunks at the other end and multiple other easy looks at the basket.
It was the perfect stretch for Ohio State, this spurt of five-plus minutes.
But unfortunately for the Buckeyes, it was probably the only portion of a 70-62 win over the visiting Knights in which they played to their full potential.
“In the second half we kind of got it going a little bit, but we’ve just got to come out with better juice,” said redshirt junior guard Kam Williams, who scored 17 points and hit a trio of 3-pointers in the game. “Whenever we have a stretch like that we always talk about it, but we need to just start doing it and I just feel like we haven’t been doing it.”
And perhaps there’s a reason for that.
Ohio State looked so good for most of Wednesday’s game against No. 6-ranked Virginia. The Buckeyes led for more than 35 minutes of the game, and even though it wound up being a two-point loss, there were plenty of positives to take.
But against Fairleigh Dickinson, a team which entered Saturday ranked No. 294 nationally by KenPom, Ohio State looked rather underwhelming. Perhaps, Williams said, it’s because the Buckeyes have a problem with playing down to the level of competition.
“Me personally, I feel like this team is at its best when we’re about to play a game and we play like our hair is on fair,” Williams said. “I feel like when we play these type of games we don’t have that same sense of urgency, sense of, ‘We’ve got to get this stop, we’ve got to get this rebound or I’ve got to make the extra effort plays.’”
“I feel like we only do that when we’re playing against teams that we think can compete with us. We can’t play at the level of the competition that’s against us.”
Williams is right, and that’d be a big problem for Ohio State moving forward. The Buckeyes simply aren’t good enough right now to overlook any opponent, despite the fact they carry a 7-1 record in the first week of December.
If this team is going to reach its full potential, improvement from game to game is essential. Ohio State played well in a loss Wednesday but didn’t necessarily play all that well in this victory with the exception of a five-minute stretch to open the second half.
The Buckeyes committed nine first-half turnovers and made just 11-of-21 attempts from the free-throw line in the game. They allowed a Fairleigh Dickinson team that has just one win over a Division I opponent to hang around long enough to feel like there was a chance to pull off a shocker.
“Obviously, we didn’t play how we wanted to play,” said junior big man Trevor Thompson, who recorded a double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds. “We started off kind of — the flow of the game was just really slow and was kind of sloppy and we had a lot of unforced turnovers.
"We’ve just got to come out and play better, prepare better.”
Ohio State won the game and led by as many as 17 points at one point so let’s not make it sound like the outcome was ever truly in doubt. The Buckeyes started the second half with the sense of urgency they were looking for and sort of coasted from there.
But head coach Thad Matta said Friday when previewing this matchup with the Knights he was curious to see how his team would respond after losing its first game of the season. The answer was, well, not all that great despite a victory.
“It feels better that we won the game, that’s for sure,” Matta said. “Those were things that were addressed in terms of how we handle a loss and how we come back out and play. That tells me we’re not quite where we need to be just from the standpoint of I just didn’t like the overall effort we had today and we’ve got to get that corrected by Tuesday night.”
Tuesday night is a game against Florida Atlantic, another mid-major team ranked in the 200s in KenPom’s ratings. One of those teams.
With back-to-back games against Connecticut and UCLA to follow, it’s important Ohio State plays well. The Buckeyes can’t afford to overlook anyone.
“We can’t revert back,” Thompson said. “We’ve just got to continue to strive and continue to build off things.”
“Just sticking with our system,” Williams added. “Our system, we just work on it every day and we’ve proven when we deviate from our system who we really are and we’re not good.
“When we’re all locked in I feel like we’re clicking on all cylinders.”
