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Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The Ohio State men’s basketball team almost got a good win Monday night.
Yes, the Buckeyes rallied from a 14-point deficit to take a three-point lead over No. 10 Nebraska in the second half, but Jake Diebler’s team could not hang on to that advantage for long.
The Cornhuskers made the plays they needed to make down the stretch and improved to 15-0 on the season while the Buckeyes dropped to 10-4.
Jeff Gilbert recapped the game for PressProsMagazine.com, and I was fortunate to be able to write a recap for The Associated Press.
There is lots of season left, but we’re already able to eliminate some goals from this Ohio State basketball team.
They are not Final Four quality, nor are they going to be in the hunt for a Big Ten title.
Looks more like they are going to have to scrap to get their first NCAA Tournament bid since 2022.
What’s the issue?
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Urgency was the word of the night from Jake Diebler.
That’s an interesting term for this team.
Diebler said his team lacks it sometimes, and that has cost them in close games.
He spoke at length about many parts of the game when it was over and kept coming back to the impact of a few 50/50 balls.
Hustle plays, except he thinks his team hustles.
They work hard, he said, but they still get beat in the margins.
I think whether or not those are congruent statements is up for debate, but if you look hard enough you can kind of see what he means.
Regardless, that word urgency is what stuck with me after turning things over for a while in the postgame interview room.
“I think we have a tough group. I just think we’re lacking and it’s a value, like playing with urgency is to the core of who we are and who we should be and for some reason we’re just not doing that the entirety of the game. That’s where I think we’re missing on a couple of those tonight. I think it was more of just a little bit of an urgency. Our guys want it. They want to win. They’re playing hard. You could maybe make the argument again we had a coupe guys who were fatigued, but I don’t question our effort. I don’t question our want-to at all. That’s why when I tell our guys we are right there against some top 10 teams in the country, if it was an effort or something like that I’d be lying to them if I said that.”
Diebler harped on 50/50 balls and effort plays, something a coach always worries about, but there is evidence they really make the difference for this team.
Ohio State is 41st in the NET rankings, which is among the tools the Selection Committee uses to pick the field for the NCAA Tournament, and 39th in KenPom’s efficiency ratings.
The latter has the Buckeyes 31st in the nation in offensive rating and 68th in defense. So they can score, but they aren’t a death star offensively by any means, and they aren’t an elite defensive team, either.
Of course improving at both ends would be ideal, but the difference right now for the Buckeyes is the little things, as Diebler said.
Ohio State is 0-3 in Quad 1 games, but they were a possession away from inning two of those (North Carolina and Nebraska) so, yes, grab a few more defensive rebounds or avoid a couple of turnovers and they are 11-3 or 12-2 with a strong NCAA Tournament resume.
They could also be just a game back in the Big Ten standings, though it’s hard to imagine this six-man team competing for a conference title with the likes of Michigan and Purdue when we already saw them be generally outclassed by Illinois on their own floor.
Diebler’s dudes have to crawl before they can walk.
Maybe they have at least gotten to their feet.
Can they stay on them?
How fast can they go?
Urgency is something this program either needs a lot more of or has too much of.
If there were more urgency, maybe they would not have gotten to this point 12 years removed from the second golden age of Ohio State basketball under Thad Matta.
They had the urgency to build a big new arena 25 years ago but not the fan base to fill it or the passion for basketball to make it loud enough to provide a home-court advantage.
They can get some good players but not enough to be really good again.
They also don’t get enough gritty players to grind out wins like some teams do in this conference.
Ohio State basketball has existed in a weird purgatory since losing to Wichita State in the 2013 Elite Eight.
I never thought they would lose that game (thought WSU turned out to be really good), and I never thought they would go another dozen years without even getting back to the Sweet 16.
Now I never think they will get that far again.
That makes showing significant improvement, well, urgent right now, doesn’t it?
No time like the present I guess…
Next up is a trip to the Pacific Northwest to play Oregon on Thursday night and then Washington on Sunday night.
I will have This Week in Ohio State Football on Friday and perhaps another post between now and then depending on how things go.
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