When Penn State came to Columbus, Ohio State sent the Nittany Lions home with a 106-74 loss after catching fire from beyond the arc in the second half to improve to 9-0.
Since that 32-point victory against a tough Penn State team, the Buckeyes have dropped five of their past eight games. Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann spoke to members of the media to preview the second matchup of the season between Ohio State and Penn State.
- We’ve got another really tough road game against a really good Penn State team. I think it is our biggest challenge of the year to date, with how tough it is to play there, how well-coached they are, athletic and talented.
- Sophomore guards Luther Muhammad and Duane Washington are expected to play against Penn State on Saturday, Jan. 18. The suspension is an opportunity to learn. They are both players we care about.
- Freshman guard D.J. Carton’s adjustment to college has been tough for him. He was rated about the same as former Buckeye Keita Bates-Diop, who only played five minutes or less 15 times as a freshman.
- Carton played really solid the other day. Offensively, he was good. The biggest thing for him is eliminating his passing, dribbling and decision-making turnovers
- We had a freshman guard at Butler, Kamar Baldwin, who struggled with the ball in his first year. About five games in to his freshman year, we had to move him off the ball.
- I think because of Carton’s size, we always thought it was a possibly we’d play him and junior guard C.J. Walker together, with Carton off the ball.
- The last game against Penn State was an outlier. Fourteen made threes is an outlier in college basketball.
- Yesterday, we focused a lot on our clean-up stuff.
- We’re going to face a different Penn State team. They will be at home, their coach makes good adjustments and they’ll play hard as they always do.
- We look more than anything at the looks we’re getting and if they’re good looks when we’re struggling at shooting.
- Freshman forward E.J. Liddell? E.J. is in a great place. It’s hard, tomorrow he will have to guard one of the top 2-3 players in the league. He’s always been the strongest, biggest guy, so he’s had to adjust. We have to play both him and Carton in significant roles.
- The freshmen can’t be defined by how they score. There is more than that.
- Freshman forward Alonzo Gaffney has been out with a knee injury.
- I have never seen the depth of bigs in a league like there is in the Big Ten this year.
- Going against solid post players is an adjustment. North Carolina and West Virginia had some big guys, but we did not face the depth of big guys that we’re seeing now earlier in the year.
- Weakness at defending the three? We missed some assignments the other day. We need to be better at attention to detail.
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