WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The cozy confines of Mackey Arena made for an interesting scene on Saturday as Ohio State prepared to take the floor for the second half of its game against Purdue. Fans who sit courtside get to mill around in a lounge area adjacent to the hallway leading to each team’s locker room. To get from there to the arena floor, both teams had to navigate a sea of Boilermakers buzzing in the hallway, drinking beers, waiting in line for the bathroom and discussing a first half that was all Purdue.
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It was there, surrounded by reveling fans, that the Buckeyes gathered around junior forward Andre Wesson. His words were muffled by the party happening around them. Justin Ahrens, the plucky freshman coming off 29 points against Iowa, could be heard saying, “It’s just us.” Players listened, nodded their heads and stared at the floor that was designed to look like train tracks leading out into the gym. At the end of the track was no uncertain fate for Ohio State. It trailed by 28 at the half, and lost 86-51 on a Purdue Senior Night that had Mackey teeming with energy even before the first tip as the crowd got word that Indiana had upset Michigan State and created a path to an outright Big Ten title for the Boilermakers.
This was the low point of the Buckeyes’ season, or so they hope.
It was the most lopsided loss of Chris Holtmann’s career, topping the 34-point defeat he took against Presbyterian while in his first season at Gardner-Webb in 2011.
It is, frankly, not all that worthy of dissection. With sophomore center Kaleb Wesson serving an indefinite suspension, Ohio State was out of sorts on both ends of the floor. The small-ball lineup it had used to great effect in a home loss to Purdue in January didn’t work this time as the Boilermakers switched every ball screen on defense, denied driving lanes, overextended on OSU’s perimeter players without any inside threat and attacked the interior of Ohio State’s defense. The Buckeyes had little life to them. The insertion of Kaleb Wesson into the lineup might have only closed the gap some.
As senior guard C.J. Jackson said afterward: “When you play any team in the league the way we did today, it’s not good enough. We’d lose any other night playing like this.”
Oh, and Purdue didn’t frickin’ miss. Or, at least it felt that way on a day when the Boilermakers had a run of 11 field goals in 13 possessions in the first half, and finished 55 percent from the field and 52 percent from 3-point range. Purdue got whatever it wanted. Ohio State got only more questions.
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Will the sting of this loss linger? How long will they be without Kaleb Wesson, and what’s the impact? Are OSU’s NCAA Tournament chances now shot? What to do the Buckeyes have to do to get a bid? Do they even deserve one?
Start with Wesson, because his status impacts the answer to all of those questions. Ohio State announced last Friday that he’d be out indefinitely for a violation of athletic department policy. OSU expects him back before the end of the season. It’s a safe bet to assume that he’ll miss this Wednesday’s game at Northwestern, and probably the regular season finale on Sunday against Wisconsin. The likeliest scenario has Wesson back with the team for its Big Ten Tournament opener, which should be Thursday, March 14 — seed and opponent to be determined.
With much of the conversation this year centering on Ohio State’s building an offense around Wesson, a more traditional big man prone to foul issues, the assumption is that his loss would be felt most on that end. OSU’s offense was never setting the world on fire, but it took a real downturn at the start of Big Ten play when teams got more physical with Wesson, either forcing him into foul trouble or crowding him while putting the onus for scoring on the Buckeyes’ inconsistent shooters. Lately, it had felt like OSU was finding ways around that. Ahrens injected some life into the lineup, and players like Duane Washington and Keyshawn Woods started to find their shot. Players cut well off the ball and made themselves available to Wesson, who averaged 3.6 assists in OSU’s five February wins.
Yet the game against Purdue was only OSU’s third-worst offensive performance, efficiency-wise, this season. Losses at Michigan and Michigan State, in which Wesson played, were worse. Meanwhile, the defensive efficiency against Purdue (1.37 points allowed per possession) was the worst mark of the season and OSU’s worst since at least 2001.
“When Kaleb was playing really well he was an anchor for us in a lot of ways defensively with his size — not to block shots, but to be a rim protector,” Holtmann said before the game. Afterward, his words proved a bit prophetic.
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“The gap between his defense and our other guys’ defense at that position is seismic,” he said. “I think that’s where I’m concerned.”
The numbers bear that out. Coming into the Purdue game, Ohio State’s offense had averaged an identical 1.01 points per possession and 51.8 percent effective field-goal percentage with or without Wesson on the floor. A slight difference can be seen in the defensive numbers. The defense allowed 0.89 points per possession and a 46.9 effective field-goal percentage with Wesson, and 0.97 points per possession and a 47.3 effective field-goal rate without him.
Wesson alone is an average defender, giving up .889 points per possession, per Synergy. But he can deter drivers and is lightyears ahead of freshman Jaedon LeDee, who started in Wesson’s place against Purdue and is in the bottom 1 percent of players in the country allowing 1.29 points per possession. With Kyle Young somewhat limited by what he can do thanks to the lingering effects of a stress fracture in his leg, and with Wesson out, Ohio State is operating at a deficit when it comes to viable interior defenders.
Add in the fact that Washington and Ahrens — who rank fifth and ninth, respectively, among the 10 regulars in defensive points per possession — have been seeing some increased minutes at the expense of Luther Muhammad and Musa Jallow — who rank second and third — because of what each brings on offense, and Ohio State’s defensive prospects in the short-term are a bit precarious.
“The guys that are perceived to be threats (on offense) are so important when you get into league play, guys who have kinda built a reputation in terms of being a threat,” Holtmann said. “I think we’re trying to balance that. Having those guys on the floor (Washington and Ahrens) really helped us. Does this dynamic change things? I’m not sure. Our offense at times has struggled at such a high level that this is the way we’re gonna have to go and see if we can hold on enough defensively. That’s not necessarily what I love, but it’s been necessitated because of our struggles.”
On the offensive end, it’s clear that Ohio State benefits from having shooters like Washington and Ahrens around Wesson. It’s also clear that Washington and Ahrens might struggle some without the space created by Wesson’s presence inside, while at the same time putting OSU in a worse off place defensively.
How does that impact Ohio State this week? Well, it appeared to matter greatly against Purdue. Even with lapses in effort, the Buckeyes struggled to contain everything the Boilermakers can do offensively, especially when they’re spreading teams and hitting shots like that. The final two games of the regular season should bring more manageable challenges. Northwestern is No. 196 in the country overall in offensive efficiency and the league’s worst team during conference play. Wisconsin is a more respectable No. 42 overall, but still only No. 8 in Big Ten play. Purdue, for comparison, is No. 5 in the country and No. 1 in the Big Ten in offensive efficiency.
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Still, the prospects for winning either of these last two games lessens without Kaleb Wesson, and that gets compounded by the fact that Ohio State is coming off a 35-point loss after already showing this year that it can have crises of confidence.
“I think obviously this is a team that has a lot of new parts and new faces,” Holtmann said. “We’re learning that this group can have moments where they maybe struggle with confidence or struggle with their belief. As coaches, we gotta find ways to give them that.”
That’s imperative because losing how it lost to Purdue seemed to have little impact on Ohio State’s NCAA Tournament chances.
The Buckeyes went into that game No. 40 in the NET ratings, the new sorting metric for tournament selection that’s replacing RPI this year. They came out of it at No. 43 after all of the weekend’s games. They’re 4-8 in Quadrant 1 games (with all four wins on the road), and 8-10 overall in Quadrants 1 and 2. They have one loss outside of that, and chances to pick up wins in the first two Quadrants this week, including what would be its best win of the season (according to NET) against Wisconsin. Ohio state’s strength of record is No. 34, and its strength of schedule is No. 40. Its standing among the various advanced stats metrics used on the committee members’ team sheets is no worse than No. 40.
Something as simple as one more win could be all Ohio State needs to secure a bid. Beating Wisconsin is a best-case scenario, but any win would help. That’s because OSU still doesn’t appear to be anywhere near the line at which it would worry about being one of the first few teams left out of the tournament. Most projections have the Buckeyes between a No. 8 and No. 11 seed. Thank a weak bubble, Ohio State’s relatively good efficiency margins despite an up and down season and a Big Ten that doesn’t have a team outside the top-75 in KenPom or the top-100 in NET for that. Whether the criteria is still too favorable to middle-of-the-pack high-major teams while excluding other teams that play well and rack up wins in worse leagues is a separate conversation. This is the reality of Ohio State’s position. As things stand now, they should feel about as comfortable as an 18-10 team with a sub-.500 conference record can feel about getting into the NCAA Tournament.
How this week goes, though, can change that.
If Ohio State were to play in the NCAA Tournament, Kaleb Wesson would assuredly be back for that. He’ll back for the Big Ten Tournament. But how the Buckeyes fare without him against Northwestern and Wisconsin could greatly change their postseason prospects. There’s some eye test involved here separate from résumé, and looking at Ohio State through that lens has yielded inconsistent and sometimes ugly results.
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Exactly how this ends for Ohio State could depend on how much something like losing by 35 can stay with a team.
“We’ll see. I’m more concerned with how our team is gonna play and compete regardless of the absence of Kaleb,” Holtmann said. “We’ll see if it has a carry-over effect. If we don’t compete harder, then it certainly will.”
(Top photo of Holtmann: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)