A displeased Chris Holtmann strolled into the home locker room at the Schottenstein Center following the final buzzer of the first half with one overriding thought dancing in his mind.
He felt lucky. Lucky to only be down 38-28, which he viewed as better than the alternative.
The way he saw it on Wednesday night, Rutgers easily could’ve been up by more than 10 points on Ohio State. The Scarlet Knights had gone 7-for-13 from 3-point range as the Buckeyes made only one of their 10 triples before halftime. Holtmann thought the damage “could have been a little bit worse.”
“I think we were frustrated in general,” Holtmann said. “I think their ability to make shots and their proficiency at making shots early I think stunned us a little bit. It shouldn't have, but it did. And I didn't think they felt us enough.”
He thought the Buckeyes needed to come out at the start of the second half with some fight, make Rutgers work for open looks and play with a greater degree of physicality that affected their opponent. And that’s what happened – initially, at least.
Kyle Young drew a foul under the basket and knocked down a pair of free throws. CJ Walker came out of nowhere to go Full Dikembe Mutombo for a blocked shot. Young recovered an offensive board and followed it up to chop the lead to six points then, along with a host of his teammates, blocked a Jacob Young attempt as he raced to the rim.
Ron Harper Jr. quieted the Buckeyes with a bucket of his own, though. Young followed up with a second made shot. Harper hit his third three of the game, then his fourth. Suddenly, despite coming out of the break hot, Ohio State trailed by 16 points. If made shots by Rutgers had bothered the Buckeyes early on, this 10-0 run didn’t help.
Little did those in the building know at the time, the moment Harper hit his second straight 3-pointer with 15:38 remaining on the clock would be the low point for No. 23 Ohio State, the high point for No. 11 Rutgers and exactly when the entire game began to turn around as the Buckeyes began a steady second-half comeback to win, 80-68.
“Really unique game,” Holtmann said. “One of the more unique games I've been a part of in terms of the ebbs and flows of the game.”
Duane Washington Jr., who entered the day shooting 36 percent from the floor, was just 2-for-6 through the first 25 minutes. Then, Holtmann subbed the junior guard into the game with three fouls and he drilled the first shot he launched, a triple with 14:38 remaining. The next time he came down the court, he rose once more, again connecting on a 3-pointer. Two possessions later, another 3 from Washington went through the net.
The “bang-bang-bang” shots from Washington, as Holtmann termed them, along with Seth Towns’ first make of his Ohio State career chopped the lead to 10 points.
“Buckeye Nation knows I'm a pretty confident guy, so I'm always going to be confident and look for my shot,” Washington said. “It's what I've been good at in my career. Today's expected. I expect to make every shot I take.”
That trio of shots, Holtmann believed, was “critical” to the Buckeyes getting a foothold in the second half.
With some momentum, they turned inside. Before the game, the coaching staff had told E.J. Liddell and Young to “attack their bigs” with starting center Cliff Omoruyi out and depth behind Myles Johnson limited. So, that’s exactly what they did, continuing the main aspect of the game that actually worked in an otherwise rocky first half. Liddell got to the line to sink a pair of free throws and scored two more a minute later. Towns interjected himself into the game, before Holtmann removed him for defensive reasons, by grabbing an offensive board and finishing it with a layup underneath. Liddell followed that up with a dunk of his own.
Musa Jallow subsequently grabbed an offensive board and got fouled on the way up before flying through the air to finish an and-one dunk on a put-back attempt.
“We really needed every moment,” Holtmann said. “Every point.”
The first of two fouls Jallow drew was on Johnson, Rutgers’ backup center who started on Wednesday in place of Omoruyi. Without him, head coach Steve Pikiell had to go even deeper onto the bench of a team that prefers a tight, seven-man rotation with a healthy Omoruyi.
“When the big man fouled out, I kind of grinned inside, but I didn't grin out loud,” Liddell said. “That was just another opportunity to go in the paint and dominate in the paint.”
And he – along with Young, who finished with 17 points and 11 boards – did just that.
After free throws from Montez Mathis made it a six-point game with 7:29 remaining, Liddell started feasting. He scored seven points across a 25-7 game-ending run, putting an 0-for-5 start to the game from the field well into the back of everybody’s minds. By the end of the night, he’d set a new career high with 21 points to go along with six rebounds.
“I'm not going away from that kid,” Holtmann said. “I'm not going away from E.J. Liddell. That's for sure. He's a gifted offensive player. He's taken some real strides in other areas. 0-for-5, 0-for-6, 0-for-8, we're not going away from that kid.”
To cap off the comeback, Holtmann trotted out a lineup of four upperclassmen – Jallow, Young, Walker and Washington – and a sophomore in Liddell for the last seven-and-a-half minutes. The veterans, in the head coach’s words, “stayed really committed to how we wanted to play.”
Liddell and Young carried the load down low. Washington hit a floater to tie it up with 4:54 left and hit two free throws 31 seconds later to grab the lead for the first time since the beginning of the game. Walker had two assists and zero turnovers in the last 14 minutes. Jallow locked up Harper, who went scoreless in the final 10 minutes and missed his last six shots.
“I thought Musa's play on him and awareness was as critical as anything throughout the game,” Holtmann said. “He continues to do a really good job on the opposition's bigger wings.”
By the time the Buckeyes began adding to their lead with three straight buckets from Liddell and Young, it became fairly clear that Rutgers didn’t have the horses to stay in it any longer. Not with the depleted frontcourt and Jacob Young dealing with back pain after a nasty fall on a failed dunk attempt.
Three and a half minutes after Washington tied the game, Ohio State already held a double-digit lead, and with 1:21 left, it was effectively over.
“Grinding, grinding, grinding. That's how Big Ten games work,” Washington said. “We've got a lot of older guys who've been here and been in this moment a lot, so we were able to stay poised.”
