Chris Holtmann praises his team's dominant defensive effort following 73-57 victory over Northwestern

The Ohio State Buckeyes (10-3 overall, 2-0 Big Ten) jumped all over the Northwestern Wildcats in the first half on Sunday, holding a commanding 35-17 advantage at halftime. The Buckeyes didn’t let the Wildcats get much closer the rest of the way and they cruised to a dominant 73-57 performance. Ohio State got an excellent performance from Brice Sensabaugh, who stuffed the stat sheet with 18 points and eight rebounds. He was one of the nation’s most highly touted shooting guards coming out of high school and he certainly played like it on Sunday. The Buckeyes also got a double-double from Zed Key, who stuffed the stat sheet with 11 points, 11 rebounds, two steals, and two blocks in the winning effort. Following his team’s dominant performance against Northwestern, Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann spoke with Stephen Bardo of The Big Ten Network on the court.

Not surprisingly, Chris Holtmann was quite pleased with his team’s dominant performance on the defensive end. “Good. Yeah, really good, Stephen. I’ve got a lot of respect for this Northwestern team. You win on the road at Michigan State, you’re a good team. And Chris [Collins] does a fantastic job. I just thought it was as good of a defensive effort as we’ve had in a few years. And our guys deserve all the credit for that,” Holtmann said.

The Buckeyes limited Northwestern to hitting just 19 of their 67 shots from the field (28.4%) on Sunday night. From three-point range, the Wildcats didn’t fare much better, only hitting 9 of their 31 attempts (29.0%).

Holtmann then discussed the tremendous balance his team has on both the offensive and defensive sides of the floor. “You know, we’ve been really good offensively for a couple of years. But our defense has to continue to come for us. To continue to get better and better. Our guys, we’ve got good offensive players. We’ve just gotta keep buying into the idea of being really hard to score on and we were that tonight,” Holtmann said.

Justice Sueing also had a complete effort for the Buckeyes. He stuffed the stat sheet with 13 points, six rebounds, and five assists on Sunday night. Holtmann discussed how he was able to affect so many areas of the game. “His size. He’s 6-8, you know. He’s physical. He’s got good ball skills. He’s gotten tougher and tougher with every year. And I’m just really happy for him that he’s healthy. His approach and mindset and Zed [Key’s] approach and mindset and our older guys Gene [Eugene Brown III] I think set the tone here early,” Holtmann said.

Eugene Brown had not played all season because of a concussion that occurred in late October. Holtmann had also told Andy Katz that he wanted to make sure that Brown was in basketball shape once he was done healing from the concussion. He hadn’t played in a number of months, so he needed to work on his conditioning.

Katz thinks the Buckeyes could finish as a No. 3 seed in the upcoming 2023 NCAA Tournament, now they’ve started to get some key pieces get healthy, including Sueing and Brown.

Ohio State has now won five of their last six games.