Ohio State shocked the college basketball world on Thursday night when it suffered one of its worst losses in recent memory, falling 70-49 to 13-13 Northwestern due to a poor offensive showing in a game that it needed to further boost its dwindling NCAA tournament résumé.
The Buckeyes’ shocking 21-point loss left many Buckeyes’ fans searching for answers on what could have gone wrong during such an important time of the year. For head coach Jake Diebler, the team’s struggles against the Wildcats boiled down to their tendency to turn bad offense into bad defense, a trait that he had not seen from his team since the start of the season.
“This is not an acceptable way to play this game,” Diebler said. “The way we were letting our offense affect our defense almost felt almost like a new, young team, which we haven’t been. You’d expect something like that to happen at the beginning of the season. That can’t happen again, clearly.”
In addition to their confounding mistakes on the defensive end, Diebler also pointed to the team’s inability to use their physical toughness to their advantage on the inside, a fault that may have led to Northwestern holding a 36-27 edge in rebounds and 40-22 advantage in paint points over the Buckeyes.
“This is a mentally tough group, I don’t question this group’s mental toughness. I don’t question our physical toughness,” Diebler said. “I question us using said physical toughness like we’re supposed to all the time. Tonight, we had multiple defensive rebounds that were team rebounds because we didn’t hit. We just turned and they were able to tip the ball around. And then you saw in the second half them getting offensive rebounds because they were tipping the ball around.
“That’s a physical toughness that we have to execute better. We’re capable. We’ve shown it. We’ve shown we can do it. We didn’t do it enough tonight, and we all had opportunities out there. So I think the biggest thing for us is we have to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
With the season winding down to its last four regular season games and the Buckeyes inching closer to the bubble with every loss, Diebler’s team will need to tap into that potential and avoid the same mistakes that plagued them against Northwestern the rest of the year, starting with a difficult two-game West Coast trip to UCLA and USC this week.
Diebler discussed some potential changes he could enact prior to the Buckeyes’ game against UCLA on Sunday, including “simplifying” his coaching on defense to avoid miscommunications.
But for fifth-year guard Micah Parrish, who has played in nine NCAA tournament games in his last two seasons with San Diego State, it ultimately boils down to the team playing with urgency and doing whatever they can to ensure that the Buckeyes don’t miss the 68-team field for the third straight season.
“That’s a must-win game,” Parish said of Sunday’s matchup with the Bruins. “So I expect us to play hard, play like our lives are on the line. I think we have a great group of guys that want to win and want to play in the tournament, so I think we’ll find a way.”
“Every game is a must-win,” he added. “I came here to win. I came here to go to the tournament. We need to win to get into the tournament, so that’s what we have to do. We need to find a way.”
Ohio State’s matchup against UCLA will tip off from Los Angeles at 3:45 p.m. on CBS.
