Buckeyes Must Find Answers Offensively if They Are Without Loving For Significant Period of Time

By Tim Shoemaker on February 4, 2015 at 9:12 pm
Marc Loving warms up.
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About an hour before tipoff Wednesday night in West Lafayette, Ohio State announced it would be without the services of sophomore forward Marc Loving as he did not travel with the team.

It certainly looked like the 20th-ranked Buckeyes could have used him.

Purdue’s defense stifled Ohio State’s offense without the services of its best perimeter shooter and the Boilermakers controlled the Buckeyes’ star freshman guard D’Angelo Russell just enough to earn a 60-58 win at Mackey Arena.

"Hopefully we’re going to get him back at some point,” Ohio State head coach Thad Matta said of Loving prior to the game to the Big Ten Network’s Stephen Bardo. “But we do things a certain way and expect certain things."

Ohio State’s official statement before the game said, “sophomore forward Marc Loving did not travel with the Ohio State men's basketball team to Purdue. He has temporarily lost his privilege to wear the Scarlet and Gray.”

No further explanation was given.

Without Loving — who leads the Big Ten in 3-point shooting at 53.2 percent and is the Buckeyes’ second-leading scorer at 11.7 points per game— Ohio State’s offense struggled big time against the Boilermakers. The Buckeyes shot just 24 of 57 from the field (42 percent) and made only 4 of 15 attempts from behind the 3-point line.

Russell scored a team-high 20 points, but also needed 18 shots to get there. The star freshman also made just 2 of his 7 attempts from behind the arc. Ohio State, though, didn’t give Russell much help. Amir Williams scored 10 points for the Buckeyes, while Sam Thompson added nine.

Loving had been coming off the bench during the last three games for Ohio State and had really thrived in that role. The Buckeyes had won three straight games prior to Wednesday’s loss to the Boilers and Loving had averaged 12.3 points and 4.0 rebounds per game since coming off the bench.

"We need Marc to play like that," Matta said following Ohio State’s most recent win over Maryland. "I hope that he knows the confidence I have in him."

Following the game, Matta had this to say via Bob Baptist of the Columbus Dispatch

For now, it appears like the Buckeyes will be without Loving’s services for the foreseeable future. Someone else, outside of Russell, is going to need to fill the void.

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