OHIO STATE

Buckeye basketball tries to right itself against Cavs

Ohio State is 2-3 for the first time in Thad Matta's tenure and must play No. 10 Virginia Tuesday night.

Rob McCurdy
Reporter

COLUMBUS - It's unprecedented, and not in a good way.

Coming into his 12th season at Ohio State, head coach Thad Matta had lost just once to an unranked non-league opponent. This year he's experienced it three times in a row.

The last time the Buckeyes lost back-to-back home games to non-conference opponents was 1963, but that changed last week.

The three-game losing streak against Texas-Arlington, Louisiana Tech and Memphis is the longest since 2013-14 when OSU lost four straight in the Big Ten. This is also the deepest into a season that a Matta-coached team has been under .500 at Ohio State.

“None of us expected to be 2-3," sophomore forward Jae'Sean Tate said. "You’ve got to stay the course. We’ve got to learn to grow every week and every day in practice. It starts in practice. We’ve got to practice harder and really take ownership of what coach wants us to do.

“We need everybody locked in and playing as hard as they can and as smart as they can.”

The roster has undergone a major overhaul with seven new faces this year. There are no seniors on the roster and just one junior — forward Marc Loving. Other than Loving, Tate is the only other returnee who was a big part of last year's rotation.

“I feel that Coach (Matta) has become more positive because he knows that losses might have a little impact on us," Tate said. "I feel that he’s just trying to be there for us and see the bigger picture and not just think about the loss. There’s a lot of basketball to be played. We might be 2-3 right now, but we have (more than) 20 games left so it’s not too late to turn this thing around.”

A big opportunity awaits the Buckeyes on Tuesday night when they host No. 10 Virginia in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. A win over the 5-1 Cavaliers would certainly go a long way toward fixing what ails the young OSU squad.

"Teams go through losses all the time," Tate said. "It’s how you bounce back the next game. We’ve got to continue to go out there and play with the energy that we played with the last game and just play smarter because that really hurt us.”

Turnovers and free throw shooting have plagued the Buckeyes. Their assist to turnover ratio of 60-81 is well on the negative side, while the team is shooting less than 60 percent from the stripe. Averaging almost 20 fouls a game also shows there is more to learn on the other side of the court.

"My whole thing is I want to be a better basketball team tonight than we were last Friday night and just continuing to build and build and build and build and guys learning and learning what we have to do to play within ourselves and play our best basketball," Matta said. “Winning is great, but we’ve got a long way to go in terms of identifying who we are as a basketball team right now.”

The team feels it has the pieces. It's just a matter of figuring out where they all go.

"I feel we have everything," sophomore forward Keita Bates-Diop said. "We’re not losing games by a lot. They’re close games. It’s the turnovers. We have a lot of turnovers. If we cut back on those and make our free throws, in some of those games I feel like we could be getting different questions right now if we did those things.”

Buckeye GameDay Advance

Who: Ohio State (2-3) vs. No. 10 Virginia (5-1).

What: Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

When: Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Columbus, Schottenstein Center (18,809).

TV: ESPN.

Series: Ohio State leads 3-1.

Cavalier Notes: Virginia is 9-6 overall in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge ... The Cavaliers are coming off back-to-back 30-win seasons ... Virginia's lone loss was at George Washington in its second game of the season ... With the reputation of being a deliberate offense under coach Tony Bennett, they have scored 80 or more points in all five victories ... They are led by All-American candidate Malcolm Brogdon who averages 16.7 points as a 6-5 senior guard ... Anthony Gill, a 6-8 senior forward, averages 12.5 points, and 6-2 junior guard London Perrantes averages 10 points, while 7-foot senior center Mike Tobey comes off the bench to average 5.5 rebounds.

Buckeye Notes: Ohio State is 6-7 in all-time Big Ten/ACC Challenge games and is 67-45 overall against Atlantic Coast Conference teams ... The Buckeyes are led by junior forward Marc Loving's 16.6 points and 6.2 rebounds, while sophomore forward Keita Bates-Diop averages 12.4 points and 6.6 rebounds, and sophomore forward Jae'Sean tate chips in with 10.2 points and 7.6 rebounds ... JaQuan Lyle, a 6-5 freshman guard, is putting up 11.4 points, 3.8 rebounds and six assists ... The Buckeyes are shooting just 59 percent from the foul line,but are shooting .373 from the arc and .482 overall from the field.

Rob McCurdy covers Ohio State men's basketball for the Media Network of Central Ohio. He can be reached at rmccurdy@gannett.com or 419-521-7241. On Twitter follow @McMotorsport.