On a cold and snowy Saturday afternoon in East Lansing, Ohio State lost a heartbreaker to Michigan State. It was on Valentine’s Day, no less.
Yet the Buckeyes, which missed a valuable chance to notch another big win in Big Ten play, say they themselves remain unbroken — even if a 59-56 last-second defeat was hard to stomach in its immediate aftermath.
“Each team’s a little bit different, each guy’s a little bit different,” said Thad Matta, the Ohio State coach of 10 seasons, on his weekly radio show, displaying his battle scars.
“I felt the mood in the locker room after the game was they had a little bit obviously of a letdown that we didn’t win the basketball game,” he continued, “but I think that there was a sense that hey, we’ve got a shot.”
Because in a contest where D’Angelo Russell, the star freshman guard and team’s best player, mustered just 10 points, there was a sense of hope for a team that has proven it can play basketball rather well, be it resume-building wins against Indiana and Maryland or blowouts of conference middling programs like Penn State and Rutgers.
If you were to draw a Venn-diagram of good and bad, consider these four wins as what’s to like about an Ohio State team that has won five of its last seven games. And against the Spartans, there were things to like: the Buckeyes played good defense, rebounded well, found production from scorers not named Russell.
“We’ve got to continue to play like this,” Matta said, speaking of his message to the team following the game. “Everybody’s gotta be on the same page and that’s what we talked about when we got back to Columbus.”
Ohio State also bungled opportunities at the free-throw line (5-of-13), yielded little production from their bench (they were outscored, 20-3) and shot the ball with a tepid authority (44.2 percent from the floor and 29.4 percent from 3-point range).
In a way, a loss to Michigan State might be an even representation for an Ohio State that has pieced together uneven season, one filled with highs and lows.
Some teams, as you go deeper into the season, you’ve got some certain givens if you will.
The Buckeyes play Michigan, which has limped through its current campaign thus far, Sunday in Ann Arbor. An opportunity to display consistency, Matta said, awaits.
“That was kind of the challenge I had for these guys," he said, "taking these next eight days or whatever we have in between our next game and saying we can coast through it or attack and be a better basketball team next time we take the floor."
