The Buckeyes entered the second day of the B1G Tournament coming off the bye. Their opponent for the day, Northwestern, had just come off a difficult win over the Golden Gophers the day before. Some thought the game would be a cake walk over a conference bottom-feeder. Other’s believed that the earlier one point win was a further sign of things to come. The latter group couldn’t have been more right. Jared Sullinger’s 20 points and 18 rebounds, including 16-18 from the charity stripe, were the saving grace for the Bucks in the overtime battle.
The Buckeyes struggled to shoot the ball the whole game long. Despite having shot near 68% for the game against Wisconsin, it seems like they saved nothing for Northwestern, hitting a season low 32.2%, including 20% (3-15) from beyond the arc. There are many reasons why the Bucks could have shot that poorly, including a lack of drive and desire coming into the game. More than likely, however, the primary reason was the defensive effort of Northwestern, which again made life difficult for OSU’s offense.
Playing Northwestern seems to be the basketball equivalent of slogging through molasses. The Wildcat offense loves to sap time off the clock with their Princeton Offense. They happily pass the ball lazily around the arc looking for a weakness in the opponents defense. Then, they turn around and play aggressive man defense on the other end just to drive the offense crazy.
Northwestern did not shoot particularly well themselves, though it wasn’t their worst outing of the season. The Wildcats hit only 37% of their baskets. Most of their success came from John Shurna who hit 7-13 from the floor. In fact, Shurna was the hottest shooter of the game, with the exception of Aaron Craft’s 6-11 shooting.
The game went to overtime tied at 52 when Jared Sullinger missed a defended baseline 12-footer badly. The Buckeyes had four timeouts to burn with 20 seconds left on the clock and could have drawn up a better play. Instead, Matta put his trust in the hands of his freshman point guard, Aaron Craft, to try to find a good look. While they managed to find Sullinger down low, it was not in great position to seal the game, forcing the game into overtime.
Once in overtime, the Buckeyes began to seize control. Ohio State hit only 1 field goal during the entire overtime period, a three pointer from Jon Diebler, that gave the Bucks a much needed 6 point lead. The rest of the extra period was spent going low to Sullinger, who would miss the basket but draw the foul. Sullinger sank 10 straight free throws, and the Buckeyes hit 12 total, to seal the game.
Not surprisingly, the game opened up in a big way when Sullinger’s primary defender, Luka Mirkovic, committed his fourth foul. He was promptly issued a technical foul, his 5th, when he disagreed with the official’s call. Mirkovic was forced to leave the game, putting Northwestern in a position to defend Sullinger with players not necessarily up to the task. That very likely lead to the large number of fouls committed by the Wildcats late.
Give Northwestern plenty of credit for playing a fantastic basketball game. They knew they needed wins in the tournament in order to get their name on the guest list for the NCAA Tournament. They did almost everything they needed in order to do that, except for actually win the game. They gave OSU the scare of their life, much like Michigan did last season, which also resulted from a poor shooting night for the Buckeyes.
The Buckeyes next face Michigan tomorrow afternoon at 1:40 PM Eastern time in the semi-finals of the B1G Tournament. That game can be seen on the Big Ten Network.
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