Broken Buckeyes: What’s wrong with Ohio State basketball and can it be fixed?

Ohio State basketball was the No. 2 team in the country at one point this year but since Chris Holtmann’s Buckeyes have looked nothing like the team to start the year. Is it too late to revert back to the early-season form?

The Buckeyes are broken and it might be too late to fix before March Madness.

It’s not always easy to identify what goes wrong in a team that once looked like one of the best team’s in the country. On Dec. 7, Ohio State basketball could do no wrong. They had just put up 106 points on Penn State in their Big Ten opener and were 10-0.

Unfortunately for them, that win was followed up with their first loss of the season to Minnesota. But even that was looked at as a minor setback in the weeks to come because they traveled to Las Vegas and defeat Kentucky 71-65 shortly after.

After the victory over the Wildcats, Ohio State propelled themselves all the way to the No. 2 spot in the AP Poll, but it has been all downhill since.

They have lost six of their past eight games, with the only wins coming against the only two teams in the Big Ten (Nebraska, Northwestern) that have a losing record for the season. Since the win against Kentucky, the Buckeyes have averaged just 64 points per game. Before the win vs. Kentucky they averaged 80 points per game. That’s nearly a 20 point drop.

So the question here, what happened to the Ohio State offense?

There are a multitude of things that have happened since the win against Kentucky that you can point to. The first that comes to mind is the injury of Duane Washington that happened before their first loss to Minnesota. Since he came back from injury, he just hasn’t looked the same. Shots that were normally falling for him earlier in the season, weren’t anymore. That messed up the flow of the offense big time and it still hasn’t really recovered. But the Buckeyes defeated Kentucky without him so that obviously isn’t their biggest problem.

Before the season, Kaleb Wesson was named a top-five player in college basketball by ESPN. His play this season, especially in the horrific recent stretch for the Buckeyes, hasn’t reflected that. He’s averaging just below 14 points per game, 9.5 rebounds per game and is second on the team in assists with 2.2. These numbers, while good, tell a different story that could be why the Buckeyes are struggling.

When your center is averaging the second-most assists on the team, that probably means he has the ball in his hands a lot. It also means he is getting doubled down low more often and having to pass the ball back outside. That’s a good offense for a team with a lot of great shooters, but that’s not what this team is.

Before the injury, Washington was a knockdown 3-point shooter. Wesson leads the team in three-point percentage at 44 percent, but he only takes about 3.5 per game. That ranks third-most for the entire team.

It’s painfully obvious this team doesn’t want to shoot from the outside most of the time. Guys like D.J. Carton, C.J. Walker and even Washington have shown they want to drive more than shoot. The problem is teams are so focused on Wesson down low, when they do drive, the lane is clogged and it’s hard to get clean shots off.

So because of this, and the offense that Holtmann runs, Ohio State’s offense is very contradictory. Not to mention Wesson also leads the team in turnovers with three a game, meaning even when the team wants to shoot from the outside, it isn’t always getting to them.

This is what teams saw on film at the beginning of the season when the Buckeyes were rolling. A dominant big man who is willing to pass out to players that want to drive more than shoot. The Buckeyes haven’t had an answer for this, and it’s why they are sitting with a 3-6 record inside the Big Ten heading to February.

But it isn’t too late to fix what is broken.

There is still plenty of basketball to be played, and the Buckeyes are still firmly in the field of 64 because of their big wins earlier in the season.

They just need to find their identity on offense and figure out if they want to play through their big man. Or spread the floor and let Wesson, an above 40 percent three-point shooter, take more threes while giving the guards who want to drive the ball more space to do so inside.

Only time will tell whether Ohio State can fix what is broken, unfortunately for them, time is running out, and in a very deep Big Ten, it isn’t going to get any easier.

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