Excluding his two brief injury-hampered appearances last season, Justice Sueing started every game he played in a Buckeye uniform entering this past weekend.
Sueing was one of just two players to start all 31 games for Ohio State in 2020-21, and the sixth-year forward was one of three Buckeyes that started the first 18 games of the 2022-23 campaign.
On Saturday, amid a five-game losing streak for the Buckeyes, Sueing was pulled from the starting lineup. In fact, Chris Holtmann opted to use a starting five he’d never used before. Isaac Likekele and Brice Sensabaugh started alongside one another for the first time this season, Roddy Gayle got the first start of his college career and Bruce Thornton and Zed Key rounded out the unit.
It was the fifth different lineup Holtmann tried since the start of Ohio State’s long skid on Jan. 5. But unlike the other ones, Saturday’s lineup actually produced a win. Much of that had to do with the performance of Likekle, who played a season-high 32 minutes and turned in his best effort of the year with 18 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.
After the 93-77 win over Iowa, Holtmann said the decision to sit Sueing was directly linked to his desire to get Likekele going.
“We needed Ice. That was the decision, really. Ultimately, I felt like we needed Ice's activity defensively on (Kris) Murray. And we needed to – I liked that lineup better,” Holtmann said. “Now we were going to start Sean (McNeil) until he had his dental emergency. But that was what went into it. Justice did a good job coming off the bench. I thought he gave us real life in the first half. He's a good player and he'd just got to continue to grow. But he did a good job.”
Sueing still played 29 minutes, far from his fewest of the season, and finished with a respectable 10 points on 4-for-9 shooting. It was a rather ho-hum effort from the Hawaii native, but it was actually his most efficient performance in weeks.
In consecutive games against Minnesota, Rutgers and Nebraska, Sueing averaged just eight points a game on 26.7% shooting and turned the ball over three times a night. Before the Iowa game, Sueing had his worst performance of the season against Nebraska. With four points, Sueing scored his fewest of the year, and he shot a season-low 16.7% from the field. Sueing also had four turnovers in the three-point loss, which marked his seventh straight game with at least one giveaway. Sueing committed three or more turnovers in five of those contests.
Sueing’s struggles were clear and they coincided with a catastrophic stretch for the Buckeyes. Ohio State assistant coach Mike Netti acknowledged Sueing’s slump on Friday, but was confident that he could turn it around in relative haste.
“It's frustrating for him. I think we're all frustrated for him. He's put work in, he deserves to obviously play better on game night,” Netti said. “But what we tell all of our guys when adversity hits, you have to dive into the team, you have to lose yourself in the team and good things will happen. You'll respond, you'll play better. He had a great day of practice yesterday. We're gonna challenge him. You gotta take the kid gloves off a little bit in January and February, and you gotta play well. And he knows that.
"He's putting the time in, and he's gonna bounce back. Just, he's got to see the ball go through the net a little bit more, especially early in the game. If he can get it going early in the game. I think he's got enough ability, enough talent to do it. He'll be fine.”
When asked last Monday if Sueing was pressing a bit amid the team’s struggles, Holtmann didn’t discount the possibility.
“I think that might be part of it. I think there could be some of that with him. I think Justice has to make sure that he's controlling what he can control in terms of his attention to detail, his effort,” Holtmann said. “He can't control if he's going to make every shot. But there are things that he can control. His leadership out on the floor. And that's really what we're challenging him with. He's done a pretty good job getting to his spots. I think he is probably frustrated with a couple missed opportunities he's had, but he'll respond.”
Still the team’s second-leading scorer with an average of 12.9 points per game, Sueing isn’t far removed from a six-game stretch in which he put up 16.3 points per game on 57.6% shooting from the end of December to the start of January. But Sueing knows if his offense isn’t there on a given night, he must stay engaged to provide other contributions to aid in winning efforts.
“I know I'm a good scorer, but if shots aren't falling, they're not falling,” Sueing said last week. “But like Coach (Holtmann) said, control what I can control, whether that's just bringing my team together, being a good communicator. Just those little things on details; crashing the boards, things that I can control to help contribute to the team. So I mean, the shots aren't falling, I have a wide range of game that follows. So it's not the only thing I depend on.”
Sueing believes he’s done a “pretty good job” with the little things, even when his offense hasn’t been on, but cited defensive and rebounding as areas in which he can step up in particular.
Still, it appeared the coaching staff was sending Sueing a message by taking him out of the starting lineup on Saturday. Even if Ohio State wanted to start Likekele, the Buckeyes could have kept Sueing in the lineup – especially with McNeil listed as a game-time decision ahead of time. But even then, the Buckeyes opted to start Gayle for the first time.
Sueing didn’t respond with a showcase performance, per se, but it was an improved one nonetheless. If Ohio State can continue turning things around midseason and make noise in March, the veteran will play a major part in doing so.
“You certainly need your leadership in this moment. We're going to need them the rest of the way,” Holtmann said. “I think January and February, your leadership really gets defined. And I'm not putting all the responsibility on them. But I think it's gonna be really critical for those guys and the older guys to be able to lead in ways that good leaders lead.”
