Buckeyes Hold Off Marshall, Look To Improve Defense

Marshall had a hot shooter, and Ohio State let a big halftime lead slip away when it let the Herd get too comfortable…a few too many times on defense.

Columbus, OH – Jake Diebler watched his Ohio State basketball team score 47 points in the first half and lead Marshall by 18 points.

Pretty good stuff.

The fans – all 7,984 who were able to make a 6 p.m. Monday night tipoff – surely liked what they saw on defense and that prize freshman Anthony Thompson had 10 points and made two 3-pointers.

The Buckeyes weren’t perfect, probably not even as consistent as Diebler would like. But the feeling at halftime felt like something to build on.

However, halftime, as it often does, quelled the momentum of the team in the lead and shifted momentum to the other team. That happens when the team in the lead puts too much stock in the halftime score.

And when that happens, the inevitable struggles of defensive consistency and energy that accompany early November basketball become apparent at the start of the second half.

The Buckeyes’ defense simply didn’t make Marshall uncomfortable enough.

One minute and 58 seconds into the second half, Marshall’s energy produced a 9-3 run, trimming OSU’s lead to 12. Diebler called timeout.

With 15:13 left, the lead was down to five because of a 7-0 Marshall run. The final bucket of the flurry, a layup, came off an Ohio State turnover.

“You probably noticed the very specific possession where I didn’t feel like we were playing hard,” Diebler said.

The Buckeyes responded well enough to Marshall’s 16-3 salvo and Diebler’s timeout message to get the lead back to double-digits. Then they kept the lead there or close to it the rest of the game, emerging with an 84-74 victory.

“We had some really good moments and some not-so-good moments,” Diebler said. “We are fighting for consistency. That’s the message.”

Marshall (1-2) is expected to be a middle-of-the-pack team in the Sun Belt Conference. In the first half, the Thundering Herd gave every appearance of that expectation. They shot 41.4% and made only 1 of 8 3-point attempts. The Buckeyes (2-1) were the more physical team, often in good position and put good pressure on the ball.

The Herd’s only antidote to the Buckeyes’ aggressive ball-screen coverage was fifth-year transfer Noah Otshudi from Western University in Canada. He made 7 of 12 shots and scored 15 points. The Herd’s other top scorer, Bryce Slay, scored only two points in the half.

To start the second half, Otshudi scored three times on mid-range jump shots. Slay made a 3-pointer. Then Otshudi scored again and Slay made another 3-pointer. The Buckeyes’ defense improved after that stretch, but Diebler knows what to emphasize in practice before Friday’s game at No. 4 UConn.

“We stopped pressuring the ball enough, and that gave them space to get a full head of steam,” he said. “Now you start to help a little bit later. We lost our positioning, and it wasn’t good enough in the second half.”

The players get it. They don’t want to let good players like Otshudi have so much free rein to make 12 of 18 shots and score 27 points. Or to see a player like Slay get hot in the second half and finish with 15 points.

“It’s not just on the guards, it’s on the bigs, on me, the wings, being in the gaps to help them,” Amare Bynum said. “[Otshudi] hit some tough shots, and all credit to him, but we got to be in the gap a little more and just keep contesting.”

Modern basketball does work harder at limiting open 3-point shots and layups. However, Oshtudi excelled at making mid-range shots.

“If you ask every coach, it’s the mid-range shot that you want other teams to take,” said Buckeyes center Andrija Jelavic. “But when he makes four, five, six seven of those mid-range shots in a row, you need to adjust our defense. Then we try to play a little bit more aggressive. I think it was a good adjustment. He was quiet a little bit more towards the end, but some other guys showed up.”

Still, 40 minutes of aggressive defense on all five is what the Buckeyes will need in nonconference games against UConn, No. 22 Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and No. 15 Kansas, and, of course, in Big Ten games.

“Guard wise, we need to be more aggressive, more hand on the hip, making it hard for them to shoot,” Jelavic said. “And big wise, we need to call the screens earlier, be at the point of the screen and disturb the ball, show our wingspans and rebound the ball.”

As expected, John Mobley Jr. led the offense with 19 points and four assists. Bynum scored 10, including five key points after Diebler’s second timeout early in the second half. Jelavic scored 11 and Justin Pippen nine.

Two bright spots, however, emerged on offense and in rebounding that were needed to build the lead and hold of the Herd in the second half.

Thompson played his best game with two 3-pointers, 10 points, six rebounds and used his long arms and 6-9 frame to keep other rebounds alive. Diebler has said several times that sooner or later Thompson would play in a game like he does in practice.

“It probably cut a little bit of tension,” Diebler said when Thompson’s first 3-pointer went in to end a 1-for-11 start to his career. “If you remember, my brother [Jon Diebler] really struggled from three his freshman year, and you could almost feel the tension in the arena when he would shoot.”

Diebler said Thompson practiced well the past couple days, so he expected him to break out a little bit. He said the same thing about fifth-year guard Jimmie Williams, who transferred from Duquesne. Williams had 16 points and five rebounds.

“He can create with his ability to touch the paint and shoot, create some open looks for some other people when he puts the defense in rotation,” Diebler said. “But I also thought he gave us some good stuff defensively, and for him to get five rebounds was good for us.”

What must be good for the Buckeyes against UConn is consistent and uncomfortable defense. That will likely be the difference if their nonconference results against ranked teams are to help them when NCAA Tournament seeds are decided.

That’s the uncomfortable truth.