Chris Holtmann addresses what win vs. Maryland means for rest of season

The Ohio State Buckeyes snapped a five-game losing streak with their win over the Maryland Terrapins. For head coach Chris Holtmann, the game could have a good impact on the team for the rest of the season.

After the game, Holtmann addressed what the win could men moving forward and praised his players, explaining that they showed great leadership to get to the win and had the right approach for the game against Maryland.

“I love some of what we’ve had from our guys that we’ve talked about that are kind of the foundational pieces of our team and our program,” Chris Holtmann said. “A guy like Bruce [Thornton], in terms of how he’s led in practice the past couple of days, but Roddy [Gayle’s] ability to impact the game in a different way, even a guy like Dale [Bonner] who’s in his first year but his mindset has been so good in terms of helping this group both in practice and in games, even though he’s a quieter guy. Evan [Mahaffey], Felix [Okpara], we’ve had a lot of guys who have had the right approach.”

Ohio State beat Maryland 79-75, but it was a battle to get to that win. It was a double overtime game where six different players were called on to play at least 30 minutes, with two of those players playing more than 40 minutes.

For Chris Holtmann, getting to see his team celebrate a win is a reward to hold onto moving forward this season.

“And, as a coach, you’re just glad that they finally found the reward of a win,” Holtmann concluded.

Ohio State is currently 13th in the Big Ten conference standings with a 4-9 conference record. The Buckeyes have seven games remaining this season, including the next two against ranked opponents, Wisconsin and Purdue.

Chris Holtmann addresses Ohio State’s difficulty holding leads

One of the issues that Ohio State has had this season is holding onto big leads. That includes recently blowing a first half lead against Indiana.

After that loss to Indiana, Chris Holtmann broke down the Buckeyes’ issues holding onto leads this season.

“I just think we weren’t aggressive enough really; on either end…We’ll see. We will see,” Holtmann said. “We executed a couple of late-game sets. I’m not sure. The last one, they just jumped it. But the ones we got we wanted. We wanted the baseline out of bounds. But the last one, they jumped it.”