After his team won its third straight game in the Big Ten Tournament despite nearly blowing a double-digit second-half lead for a third straight game, Chris Holtmann took a deep breath as he sat down for his postgame press conference.
“Daggone it, do we make it interesting,” Ohio State’s coach said after the Buckeyes’ 68-67 win over Michigan on Saturday.
Holtmann had good reason to say that on Saturday. The Buckeyes had led by as many as 13 points with just four minutes and 19 seconds left to play, yet Michigan had a chance to win the game on the final possession. Ohio State only won by one point after Mike Smith’s jumper from the top of the key bounced off the back of the rim, after which time expired.
The Buckeyes hang on! @OhioStateHoops will play in the @bigten Championship Game. pic.twitter.com/T55d9HO5JL
— CBS Sports CBB (@CBSSportsCBB) March 13, 2021
In those final 4:19 of the game, Ohio State scored just five points while Michigan scored 17. E.J. Liddell missed a dunk and turned the ball over twice. Michigan got the ball back down just one with 28 seconds to play when CJ Walker was called out of bounds, though it appeared on replay that Walker never actually stepped on the baseline.
Certainly, Holtmann would have preferred to see his team maintain its lead and put away the win comfortably. But he was nonetheless proud of his team – and specifically Liddell, who got a hand in Smith’s face to help force the missed final shot – for pulling out the victory.
“I give our guys a lot of credit,” Holtmann said. “I give them a lot of credit. I think they battled. I told our sophomore (Liddell), who's had an unbelievable season, it was probably not his best three-and-a-half minutes, but it was one of his best defensive possessions there late on the switch-out to challenge Mike Smith's shot. Credit to him for responding.”
Saturday was the third day in a row that Ohio State barely held on for a win in the final minutes.
On Friday, the Buckeyes had an 18-point lead over Purdue at halftime but let that lead slowly bleed away over the course of the second half, ultimately sending the game to overtime when Trevion Williams made a game-tying layup with nine seconds in regulation. The Buckeyes ended up winning the game by nine points, 87-78, but they had to play an extra five minutes to make that happen.
In its first game of the Big Ten Tournament on Thursday, Ohio State led by 14 points with 3:24 to play but didn’t make a single field goal for the rest of the game. That allowed Minnesota to go on an 18-5 run and cut the lead to one point, on a Marcus Carr 3-pointer with 13 seconds to play, forcing Liddell and Duane Washington Jr. to each make a pair of free throws in the final eight seconds to seal a 79-75 win.
Each of the Buckeyes’ three wins in Indianapolis have been tense, yet they’ve managed to survive and advance each time, earning them a berth in Sunday’s Big Ten Tournament final. And because they lost all of those three teams during the regular season, they didn’t anticipate any of those wins would come easily.
“I wish they weren't as close all the time,” Liddell said after the Michigan win. “Sometimes it gives me a heart attack being in the game. But we don't fold under pressure. That's what we've been doing. The three teams we've played so far, we haven't beat them yet and this was our first time beating them, so we just stayed with it and we always remembered the time they beat us and they celebrated in front of our faces.”
“Daggone it, do we make it interesting.”– Chris Holtmann on Ohio State's close wins
Struggling to close out games has been a problem for Ohio State since its final four games of the regular season, all of which it lost, which will likely keep the Buckeyes from earning a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament even if they win on Sunday. The most specific example of Ohio State letting a game slip away in the final minutes came in its regular-season finale eight days ago against Illinois – the team it will play for a conference championship on Sunday – when it failed to score in the game’s final three minutes and 48 seconds, turning a 68-64 lead into a 73-68 loss.
Because of that, absolutely no lead will feel safe on Sunday, nor in the NCAA Tournament. If the Buckeyes do manage to build a lead against the Illini, Ohio State fans will be holding their breath waiting for the seemingly inevitable late-game Illinois run.
That said, Kaleb Wesson’s phrase still rings true – “a win is a win in the Ten” – and the Buckeyes have scraped together enough wins for the opportunity to play for a Big Ten Tournament title on Sunday. And they’ll take that opportunity however they can get it.
“Every game here’s been a challenge,” Holtmann said. “We certainly could have lost all three of them. But we also probably dropped one or two (in the regular season) that we could have won. So I give our guys credit. It’s a phenomenal experience, I’m glad they’re enjoying it.”
