All of the momentum Ohio State had seemed to build over the last two weeks came to a screeching halt Wednesday at Purdue.
About an hour before tipoff in West Lafayette, the school announced sophomore Marc Loving did not travel with the team as he had "temporarily lost his privilege to wear the scarlet and gray." Then, the 20th-ranked Buckeyes went out and played an ugly, low-scoring game that resulted in a 60-58 loss to the Boilermakers.
| WHO | WHERE | WHEN | TV |
|---|---|---|---|
| at Rutgers (10-14, 2-9) | Louis Brown Athletic Center | 5:30 p.m. | BTN |
The loss to Purdue snapped Ohio State's three-game winning streak in which the Buckeyes were playing their best basketball of the season.
Wins on the road in the Big Ten certainly don't come easy, and the Boilermakers are no slouch. In fact, Purdue currently sits in third place in the Big Ten standings.
Ohio State has another opportunity tonight, however, to pick up a road win in the league when it travels to take on a Rutgers team which finds itself near the bottom of the Big Ten standings. The Buckeyes will be without the services of Loving again, though.
Opponent Breakdown
It hasn't been a great first year in the Big Ten for the Scarlet Knights.
Rutgers sits at just 10-14 overall and is a dismal 2-9 in the Big Ten. The Scarlet Knights have lost seven consecutive games. The only team with a worse league record is Northwestern, which sits at 1-8 in the conference.
Rutgers does have a dynamic guard, though, in senior Myles Mack. The 5-foot-10 point guard leads the team in scoring (14.5 points per game) and assists (4.5 per game), while also contributing 4.5 rebounds per contest.
“We know in the Big Ten it’s going to be a battle every night. We can’t really look at our record, their record. We’ve just got to go out and play like we would against any of the top teams in the Big Ten because anybody can be beat.”– Jae'Sean Tate
But the Scarlet Knights are one of the worst offensive teams in the country, averaging just under 59 points per game while shooting under 40 percent from the field as a team.
“They run variations of the Princeton offense, handoffs back cuts, that sort of thing," Ohio State head coach Thad Matta said. "They’re long and athletic and they keep balls alive on the offensive glass and defensively they really use their length and quickness to their advantage.”
Buckeye Breakdown
Without Loving, Ohio State looked completely out of sync in its loss to the Boilermakers, specifically on the offensive end. The Buckeyes shot just 42 percent from the field and made only 4-of-15 shots from behind the 3-point line.
Without Loving, the Buckeyes' offense is extremely congested as he was one player who could consistently stretch the floor. That responsibility will now likely fall on Kam Williams and Keita Bates-Diop.
It won't be easy to replace Loving, Ohio State's second-leading scorer, but the Buckeyes know it's something they must do.
"We’ve just got to play harder, really," Ohio State senior point guard Shannon Scott said. "We played hard but we could have done a lot more things better in the Purdue game. We’ve got to play with more intelligence, play more team basketball and just get ready for that now.”
How It'll Play Out
Even without Loving in the lineup, the Buckeyes are still a significantly better team than Rutgers. The more important thing for Ohio State is that it shows some improvement offensively without Loving in its lineup.
The Buckeyes should rely on D'Angelo Russell to carry them against the Scarlet Knights, but it's vital Ohio State gets some kind of production from some of its other players.
But even being the more talented side, it's still a road game in the Big Ten. The Buckeyes have won away from Columbus just twice this season — against Minnesota and Northwestern — and both wins game against bottom-feeding Big Ten teams in close games.
That could very well again be the case tonight.
“We know in the Big Ten it’s going to be a battle every night. We can’t really look at our record, their record," Ohio State freshman forward Jae'Sean Tate said. "We’ve just got to go out and play like we would against any of the top teams in the Big Ten because anybody can be beat.”
