Buckeyes hope to rebound from disturbing home loss

Thad Matta gave his team extra time to absorb Sunday’s defeat to Indiana.

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COLUMBUS — Ohio State’s basketball players wanted to put a disappointing loss to Indiana behind them 24 hours later. A pretty good practice, they thought, would follow Monday’s film session.

Buckeyes head coach Thad Matta, however, threw a curve ball. He gave the Buckeyes more time to think about what happened against the Hoosiers.

“Coach said he gave us a day off to kind of leave that bitter taste in our mouth,” freshman guard Jon Diebler said Tuesday. “He said we should have a heck of a practice today, just because we should be anxious and ready to go and ready to play Wednesday. I think our guys are kind of looking at it like that.”

The Buckeyes will play four of their next five games on the road beginning with tonight’s contest at Northwestern.

At 16-8 overall and 7-4 in the Big Ten, Ohio State is starting to look like an NCAA tournament bubble team. What’s important now is for the Buckeyes to keep their season from bursting.

Matta did not hide his disappointment over Ohio State’s lack of energy early in Sunday’s game. It seems to be a recurring theme for the Buckeyes. Senior guard Jamar Butler called out his teammates about not being ready to play after Ohio State lost at Iowa earlier this month.

“We just have to keep hammering it and keep finding ways to get guys where they’re ready to play their best basketball,” Matta said.

Matta said he believed the Buckeyes played well enough defensively to beat the Hoosiers. The majority of shots they took were 3-pointers, finishing 7-of-27. But the coach thought their shot selection was good.

Offensive execution against Indiana’s zone seemed to be Ohio State’s problem.

“We were kind of uneasy vs. Indiana,” freshman guard Evan Turner said. “We looked at game film and saw what we needed to do because we haven’t faced a zone in a while. Penetration, hitting the gaps, just doing what we’ve done in practice and executing it in the game.

“Just [having] an attack-oriented mind. We didn’t really have that like we usually do.”

The Buckeyes will have to be aggressive and smart against Northwestern. They beat the Wildcats, 62-51, at home in January but had several unforced turnovers against a 1-3-1 zone.

“I think ‘patience’ and ‘toughness’ are some of the key words you can use when you play them,” Matta said. “You have to have great toughness down the stretch of a shot clock. You have to have great toughness [to think], ‘We’ve got a good shot, but is that a great shot? Let’s swing it to the other side and see if it can’t get better.’ ”

With Ohio State’s NCAA tournament chances hanging in the balance, Matta is still reluctant to call tonight’s game a must-win. So how do the Buckeyes approach it?

“Bottom line, gotta play well,” Matta said. “There’s no if, and or buts between it.

“We haven’t talked about winning and losing with this team. It’s, ‘We have to play our best basketball.’ ”