BOOM
Former Duke forward Sean Stewart, a five-star recruit in the 2023 class, commits to Ohio State.
Ohio State faced a difficult defensive assignment on Thursday, without doubt.
Iowa possesses the highest-scoring offense in the conference and the nation's third-most efficient unit in the country, per KenPom. Not to mention, the Hawkeyes were playing at home, where they’d only lost two games all season.
But only two Big Ten teams have given up more points to Iowa in 2022-23 than Ohio State did in a performance that marks its singular lowest moment of the season, defensively speaking.
The Buckeyes gave up 92 points to the Hawkeyes, who hit 56.9% of their shots and 37% of their 3-point attempts against Ohio State. Iowa finished with 23 assists, outrebounded Ohio State by eight, outscored the Buckeyes 44-36 in the paint and closed the 17-point blowout with a 15-4 edge in second-chance points.
It was the most points and highest shooting percentage Ohio State has allowed all season.
In the Buckeyes’ previous outing, it was the offense that failed to show up. Michigan State was limited to just 62 points in Columbus on Sunday, but Ohio State scored its fewest points in 27 years (41). The Buckeyes mustered just 14 in the first half against the Spartans and shot all of 28.3% from the floor for the afternoon.
That wasn’t the case on Thursday. Ohio State actually scored more points in the first seven minutes against Iowa than it did in the entire first half Sunday, and it had more than twice as many with 7:31 to go before the intermission.
By game’s end, Ohio State tallied its most points in seven games and its second-highest single-game field goal percentage of the season. The Buckeyes knocked down 57.1% of their shots in Carver-Hawkeye Arena, a mark it only bested against Maine back on Dec. 21.
But none of that mattered because the Buckeye defense was dead on arrival in Iowa City.
Iowa started the game with nine makes on its first 12 shots. Ohio State hung tough with a hot start of its own and even held the lead for more than three minutes of the opening period. But as the first half waned, the holes in the Buckeye defense only grew increasingly glaring.
Ohio State missed five of its final six shots to close the half, and Iowa nailed four straight 3-pointers to embark on a 12-0 run that put the Buckeyes down double digits at halftime. In the final 5:30 of the first 20 minutes, it was a 15-3 stretch for the Hawkeyes.
It wasn’t the first time Ohio State’s crumbled at the end of the first half in a stretch that all but sealed its fate. And by the looks of things as of late, it won’t be the last.
Despite its 47-point outpour in the opening 20 minutes, Iowa’s 51.4% clip from the field looked modest in comparison to its second-half pace. The Hawkeyes connected on 64.3% of their shots in the final frame. So did Ohio State, in fact, but it allowed too many offensive rebounds, extra possessions and second-chance opportunities to meaningfully chip into the lead.
The Hawkeye advantage grew to as many as 28 points with 5:30 to play, but it felt insurmountable long before that.
Five Iowa players finished with 10 or more points, and two had 20-plus. Tony Perkins and Kris Murray combined to score 44 points on 65.5% from the field and 55.6% from 3-point range. Perkins, who was held to just eight points in the first meeting, led Iowa with 24 points on Thursday.
Any success Ohio State enjoyed in last month’s Iowa game has been rendered irrelevant by the seven losses that have followed. The prospect of a win feels leagues away for the Buckeyes, who have now dropped 12 of their last 13. The prospect of a win feels leagues away for the Buckeyes, who have now dropped seven in a row and 12 of their last 13.
With 12 losses in Big Ten play alone this season, Chris Holtmann has already tied the most regular-season conference defeats of his six-year tenure in Columbus. As far as that record is concerned, it doesn't appear to be a good thing that five Big Ten games remain for the Buckeyes before the start of the conference tournament.
A betting man might pencil in another loss ahead of Ohio State’s next affair. In a trip to West Lafayette in less than three days, the Buckeyes face a Purdue team that’s held the No. 1 ranking in the country for much of the season – and in one of the nation’s most hostile environments.
Never mind that the Boilermakers have now lost three games in their last four. Even a Purdue team that’s looked like a shell of itself as of late figures to be plenty more put together than Ohio State, which could still fall to last place in the Big Ten standings before all is said and done.
