Foul trouble, size disadvantage doom shorthanded Buckeyes at Purdue
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A month and a half ago, Ohio State center Owen Spencer was imitating Purdue National Player of the Year candidate Zach Edey on scout team. Flash forward to Sunday afternoon in Mackey Arena, and Spencer, a former preferred walk-on and Citadel transfer, found himself guarding the 7-foot-4 Edey against the No. 3 Boilermakers.
Suffice to say, a lot has changed in the last 45 days.
The Buckeyes have gone from being ranked in the AP Top 25 and having Purdue on the ropes at home in early January to plummeting to 13th in the Big Ten standings and facing their longest losing streak since 1997-98 in mid-February.
They haven’t just lost games, either. Ohio State lost its starting big man, Zed Key, Thursday night at Iowa when he re-aggravated his left shoulder sprain that he originally suffered in the Buckeyes’ first game agianst Purdue. With Key sidelined Sunday, freshman and backup center Felix Okpara had to step up. But when Okpara picked up two personals in the first 10 minutes of the opening frame, Spencer’s number was called.
He did his best to slow down Edey, using four of his five personal fouls in the first half, but Edey ultimately still overpowered the Buckeyes. He fittingly ended the first half with a putback dunk and finished the day with 26 points and 11 rebounds. The shorthanded Buckeyes hung around most of the opening period, except foul trouble — particularly in the front court — and rebounding issues caught up to Ohio State in an 82-55 loss.
The Buckeyes (11-16, 3-13 Big Ten) have now lost 13 of their last 14 games, including eight in a row.
Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann started four freshmen for the first time this season. Guards Roddy Gayle Jr. and Bruce Thornton both got the nod, as did forward Brice Sensabaugh and Okpara. Sixth-year forward Justice Sueing rounded out the starting five.
The Buckeyes began the game with a lead, somewhat of a rarity for Holtmann’s bunch in 2023. Ohio State won the tip, and Sueing got things going with a mid-range jumper. Immediately, the Buckeyes brought the press. It was that on-ball pressure that forced Purdue (24-4, 13-4) into two early turnovers, off which Ohio State scored three more points via a Sensabaugh layup and a Thornton free throw.
“We knew they have a 2-2-1 [press],” Boilermakers head coach Matt Painter said postgame. “They really got aggressive to start with. I thought our guys were casual to start the game. Those two turnovers right there kind of gave them a spark and got them going.”
Painter later added: “The best stretches they had during the game is when we helped them and turned the basketball over.”
Junior wing Eugene Brown III, who spent time at both the four and the five Sunday, capped the run with a 3-pointer from the top of the arc to make it an 8-2 game.
The Boilermakers, losers of three of their last four after a 22-1 start to the season, responded with a 10-2 surge that featured 3-pointers from Ethan Morton and Fletcher Loyer as well as a pair of Edey buckets.
Already, the fouls started to mount for Ohio State, which committed 13 personals in the opening frame. That showed in the box score, as Purdue recorded 19 free throw attempts in the first half, 15 more than the Buckeyes in that span.
With just over seven minutes remaining in the opening period, Sensabaugh, Okpara and Spencer all had two fouls. Sensabaugh bounced back Sunday with a team-high 20 points, however, he was whistled for his third foul with 3:06 before intermission.
Sean McNeil kept Ohio State afloat prior to the midpoint of the first half with a trio of mid-range jumpers. He enjoyed success peeling off Buckeyes screens and pulling up near the free throw line.
After McNeil’s third make, though, Purdue rattled off 13 of the game’s next 17 points to take a 31-20 lead. Boilermakers redshirt freshman Trey Kaufman-Renn — who was second to Edey with 11 points — poured in four straight free throws, and it wasn’t long before Brandon Newman lifted Purdue’s lead to eight with a 3-pointer. Utah transfer David Jenkins Jr. stretched the advantage to 11 with three makes at the charity stripe, thanks to a bad foul by Gayle.
Ohio State quickly cut its deficit to single digits, and it stayed that way by halftime, despite eight points from Edey in the final 5:33 of the period.
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The second half was a different, much-less-exciting story. Morton kicked off the final frame with his second 3-pointer, and Purdue’s lead only blossomed from there.
The Boilermakers outrebounded Ohio State, 23-10, in the second half. Seven of those boards came on the offensive glass, leading to nine second-chance points to go along with the eight second-chance points they piled up in the opening frame.
Edey was yet again the headliner in that department for Painter’s squad, which is second nationally in offensive rebounding percentage (38.1%), per KenPom. But Mason Gillis — back in the Boilermakers’ starting lineup for the first time since Dec. 21 — played a significant role on that front, too.
Gillis logged seven points and 10 rebounds, namely three on the offensive glass: one led to a second-chance layup and the other, moments later, was part of a three-rebound Purdue possession that culminated in an Edey layup and staked the Boilermakers to a 45-31 lead.
“Their four men really go to the glass,” Holtmann said. “I just think we got shoved underneath too many times. A couple missed blockouts, but I think, more than anything, we got shoved underneath a lot.”
“They’re an elite offensive rebounding team.”
Ohio State endured a stretch of nearly six minutes where it made just one field goal — a Gayle 3-pointer — while Purdue developed a 20-plus-point lead.
The Buckeyes ended their drought with a Sensabaugh 3-pointer, only to be answered by a Jenkins, end-of-shot-clock triple on the other end.
Purdue outscored the Buckeyes, 44-26, in the second half. Unlike Thursday’s contest at Iowa, Ohio State didn’t finish the game by chipping away at its deficit. Instead, that deficit just grew larger.
Still, Brown is confident he and his teammates played hard enough in West Lafayette Sunday.
“Coach has been emphasizing that we need to play the right way, just continue to do what we do, and the results will come,” he said. “I think today’s probably the best we’ve played in a while, even though we didn’t get the result we wanted.”
Oklahoma State grad transfer and Buckeyes captain Isaac Likekele clarified: “He’s not meaning that we played well enough to win. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. But on the things that we talk about in film and we’re watching over that we know that we need to get better at — the past couple games we might have been doing those things good for five minutes, six minutes. Today, he’s just saying maybe we did it good for 19, 20 minutes. So that’s all it is. It’s about improving at this point.”
Although Ohio State might be improving in terms of what Brown referred to as connectedness, the Buckeyes aren’t improving on paper. They’ve now lost three straight games by 17 or more points.
Before that, 11 of their 13 defeats were decided by single digits.
