Scarlet Sunrise: Lack of detail, toughness late spell doom for Ohio State against Hoosiers

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Lack of detail, toughness late spell doom for Ohio State against Hoosiers

Ohio State led by 18 points with 17:39 to go in the second half at home.

And the Buckeyes still lost Tuesday night against Indiana, 76-73.

“I just felt like we wasn’t detailed enough in the second half,” said Roddy Gayle Jr., who scored 15 of his 19 points in the opening frame. “First half, we came out with a sort of aggression that we need to withstand for the whole entire game.

“In order for us to be the team we want to be, we’ve got to be able to withstand that aggression and attention to detail.”

Just like last year, it’s the “little things” that have repeatedly held back the Buckeyes in pivotal moments. This time, one of those moments came in the final minute when Hoosiers senior guard Anthony Leal knocked down the game-winning 3-pointer, his only field goal attempt of the game and just his 22nd triple of his four-year career.

That perimeter bucket was created by a penetrating Trey Galloway, a more well-known veteran Indiana guard who scored 19 of his 25 points in the second half to go along with his six rebounds and four assists.

“Really just not let Galloway get downhill, get to his right hand,” Gayle said of that fateful Indiana 3-pointer. “We knew that was one of his strong suits. So just little mishaps, like small attention to details we really should have did a lot better on.

“And that’s rule No. 1 in basketball: help out the corner. And [Leal] made a great shot.”

Head coach Chris Holtmann later added: “You can’t leave a 3-point shooter on ball side.”

Holtmann was terse in his postgame press conference: short and not so sweet, really. The frustration was evident after the Buckeyes blew an 18-point second-half lead — just like it did Dec. 9 at Penn State — and recorded their eighth loss in their last nine games.

The seventh-year Ohio State head coach was asked what it was Tuesday night that made it hard for Ohio State to hang on to its double-digit advantage against Indiana.

“I just didn’t think we were aggressive enough,” Holtmann said, “really on either end.”

A follow-up question was then asked: “What gives you hope that it’s correctable at this point of the season?”

Holtmann: “We’ll see. Yeah, we’ll see.”

Even after the Leal 3-pointer, Ohio State had a chance to take the lead with under 30 seconds to go. After an Indiana timeout, Holtmann subbed in Dale Bonner, who brought the ball up on the subsequent possession, just as he did the previous game at Iowa when the Buckeyes failed to execute late.

Holtmann explained that Bonner — who is averaging just 4.6 points and 1.3 assists per game this season — was in for a set play with the Buckeyes’ small lineup.

He passed the ball to Jamison Battle. The Minnesota transfer’s Achilles’ heel this season has been his turnover issue, and it came back to bite him again, as he dribbled the rock off his foot.

Holtmann said the plan was to run the same play for Battle that, two plays earlier, got him to the free throw line.

This time, it didn’t work. After Indiana big man Kel’el Ware missed a fastbreak layup off the Battle turnover, Gayle fouled Leal, who hit two free throws.

With less than three seconds remaining, Ohio State used an out of bounds heave to set up a clean Bruce Thornton shot from beyond the arc as time expired, except it hit back iron.

“We just weren’t as detailed as we needed to be or as tough as we needed to be late,” Holtmann reiterated.

When asked about it, Gayle was honest about the frustration that set in during the second half.

“Absolutely I feel frustration,” he said. “Because in practice, that’s not who we are. You don’t get punked by the other team. It’s not the guys we have on our roster. So, of course, frustration settled in.

“They beat us to 50-50 balls. We started fouling, they started hitting shots, and we just wasn’t, you know, detailed enough to be able to win, or detailed long enough to be able to win against a really good team.”

Same problems, different game for the reeling Buckeyes, who have now lost 8-of-9 after losing 14-of-15 during an eerily similar January-February stretch last season.

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Ohio State football announces plans for spring game ticket sales

Ohio State men’s basketball has tumbled to toward the bottom of the Big Ten standings, but Ohio State spring football is right around the corner.

Although the dates of the spring season have to be announced, the date of the spring game has: Saturday, April 13. Tickets will go on sale for the exhibition Friday.

The program released details for those ticket sales Tuesday. Check it out here.

What we know: Latest on Ohio State offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien

Less than three weeks after becoming Ohio State’s new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, Bill O’Brien is a candidate for the Boston College head coaching job, which opened up after Jeff Hafley departed to be the Green Bay Packers’ defensive coordinator.

O’Brien grew up in Boston. His wife, Colleen, went to BC. He played college ball and started his coaching career at Brown. And his two different stints with the New England Patriots are well known.

His ties to the area are clear. So will O’Brien head home to coach BC?

Lettermen Row insider Alex Gleitman outlined what he knows about the situation here.

Counting down

Buckeyes vs. Akron: 206 days
Buckeyes vs. Michigan: 297 days

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