OSU hoops rebounds with blowout of No

Jeff Borzello, ESPN Personnel WriterDec 21, 2024, 10:36 PM ET

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• Basketball recruiting expert.
• Signed up with ESPN in 2014.
• Graduate of University of Delaware.NEW YORK– Ohio State’s guys’s basketball group entered this week at an essential point in its season.The Buckeyes were coming off a 38-point loss to Auburn last weekend, their third defeat in four games. In addition to the on-court struggles, Ohio State announced Tuesday that senior guard Meechie Johnson Jr., who started the very first 10 games of the season, was taking a leave of lack for personal reasons.It was nothing a journey to New York to face red-hot No. 4 Kentucky couldn’t fix, as Ohio

  State distressed the Wildcats 85-65 in the 2nd game of the CBS Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.Ohio State guard Bruce Thornton blazed a trail with 30 points, setting the tone early with ongoing aggressive drives to the rim and after that making huge shots in the second half. Kentucky didn’t have an answer for Thornton’s capability to enter the lane and finish in traffic; he had a reaction each time the Wildcats looked to cut into the lead in the 2nd half.The Buckeyes, who improved to 8-4, took control late in the very first half and Kentucky didn’t get within six points the remainder of the game.” I seem like our preparation these last couple days and how it exists [to] the team has been awesome,”Thornton said.” We understood the game plan with Kentucky, understood we could get downhill after the guards. The game was opening up … and we had the ability to get downhill.”Freshman guard John Mobley got in Saturday as one of the elite 3-point shooters in the nation but went just 1-for-8 from behind the arc. Like Thornton, however, he was able to get to the basket, making a career-high 4 2-pointers.” I feel like we simply kept attacking,”Mobley said.”That was the tactical plan, just keep attacking. We were really linked on offense, so we definitely simply kept assaulting, stuck to the tactical plan.

  “The returns of Aaron Bradshaw and Ques Glover, 2 players who missed out on the last month for various factors, supplied a sizable lift for Jake Diebler’s team.Bradshaw, who transferred to Ohio State from Kentucky last spring, had actually missed out on the past 7 games due to the fact that of a university investigation. He came off the bench Saturday to score 11 points and was a crucial factor at the rim defensively.

  Glover, who quickly signed for Mark Pope at BYU in 2023, was out the past eight games with an ankle injury– and he came off the bench to score nine points. “I thought it was a substantial boost,” Diebler said.”We felt like entering into this year, depth was going to be a real strength for us, and we have not had a chance to have fun with that depth much of this year. It’s also affected practice and structure due to the fact that there’s still a lot of newness in this program. New personnel, brand-new players, brand-new system and it’s impacted, I believe, our development a little bit.”However it was good to have some depth tonight, and those guys certainly stepped up. “Kentucky lost for just the second time all season, snapping a three-game winning streak that consisted of an overtime win over Gonzaga in Seattle and a home triumph

  over competing Louisville last weekend. The Wildcats, one of the highest-volume border shooting teams in the nation, had their worst shooting night of the season, going simply 4-for-22 from the 3-point line. Perhaps more notably, they also truly had a hard time to end up at the rim, shooting 37.1%inside the arc and simply 7-for-23 on layups.”I believe we kind of knew entering into the game that they assisted a lot, especially once we got into the paint,”Kentucky big male Andrew Carr stated. “Seemed like we probably could have done a much better job when things aren’t going our way to play off 2 feet, go back to the principles of the game … Absolutely something to learn and enhance on. “”There were a lot of ownerships our guys wish they could return,” Pope added.Kentucky has actually now enabled a minimum of one point per ownership in each of its previous five games after not permitting any of its very first seven opponents– consisting of Duke– to reach that mark. Teams are shooting almost 55 %from inside the arc against Kentucky in those 5 games.At the other end

  , Kentucky’s 2 worst offensive efficiencies– and two worst 3-point shooting performances– have can be found in its 2 losses. Over that five-game period, the Wildcats are shooting 31 %from 3 and rank No. 175 in 3-point attempt rate. For context, Pope’s BYU team last season ranked fourth nationally in 3-point effort rate.The Wildcats(10-2) have 10 days off before hosting Brown on New Year’s Eve

  and after that getting right into SEC play: home vs. Florida, at Georgia, at Mississippi State, home vs. Texas A&M, home vs. Alabama.” I understand these guys, “Pope stated. “They’ll can be found in and– it’s not going to be simply empty emotion. It’s going to resemble, we’re going to get much better, and these guys will get better, and we’ve simply got to keep trusting what we do. We had some defensive struggles tonight and after that we just was up to pieces offensively, and we simply went to our default, and our default is not right yet. Our default is still bad practices.” However these guys will react wonderfully since they’re incredible young men and

  they’ll return and work like insane and they know who they represent and how much it suggests, and it’s incredibly painful to lose this game. However they’ll react. “