Ohio State basketball beat No. 7 Maryland and returned to the standard of conjuring Big Ten magic

Ohio State guard Duane Washington drives vs. Maryland in the Buckeyes' win.

Ohio State's Duane Washington and other Buckeyes made big plays down the stretch vs. Maryland on Sunday. (Jay LaPrete, Associated Press)AP

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Ohio State Buckeyes were making winning basketball plays, a sellout crowd was leaping to its feet and a top-10 Big Ten opponent was being chopped down to size in Value City Arena. A touch pass from Andre Wesson to his brother Kaleb for a dunk; a tough drive and later a smart steal by C.J. Walker; a Duane Washington runner in the lane; and in the most crucial five-minute stretch at the end of a win over Maryland, 15 straight made foul shots.

With that 79-72 victory over the No. 7 Terrapins on Sunday, the No. 25 Buckeyes recorded their first top-10 Big Ten win in two seasons and, to my eye, gave their fans a team they could love. The Buckeyes did that by reminding everyone, including themselves, of who they should be. Of who they are supposed to be.

Ohio State basketball should settle for nothing and fear no one. Ohio State basketball should defend its home court and compete hard on the road. And when the best teams in Big Ten basketball are discussed, Ohio State has to be mentioned, almost always, practically every year, or this isn’t really Ohio State basketball.

Ohio State has fallen short of that standard most of the last two seasons.

Before Sunday, the Buckeyes were 15-20 in conference play the last two years, and that included a 1-9 regular-season mark against Big Ten foes ranked at the time of the game. They didn’t win big conference showdowns.

The Buckeyes started fast in non-conference play both last season and this season, but by the Big Ten, they were trying to hang their hats on middling wins over the middle of the pack. Beating eighth-place Rutgers and 12th-place Purdue should not qualify as impressive wins for Ohio State basketball. Those should be givens.

Beating the first-place team in the league on national TV?

What happened Sunday should be what Ohio State basketball looks like and feels like.

“I hope so,” coach Chris Holtmann said to that idea. "I think there’s an element of that where you’re saying, ‘Hey listen, this is them coming on our home floor in a weekend game in front of a great crowd. We’d better compete with everything we are. And if not, that’s not who we need to be at all.

“And this is who we need to be consistently. I think I expected that we would perform well because I think we’ve got a competitive group. But I was tied in knots the last day and a half, because sometimes it’s hard to read your group.”

That’s what the Buckeyes must eliminate next -- the Holtmann knots. Let the coach be nervous about the gameplan, but let there be no doubt about what’s going to happen when a big game is on tap. Let there be no doubt that the Buckeyes will play Ohio State basketball.

I watched Ohio State live for first time this season with the words of athletic director Gene Smith in my mind from our conversation three years ago after Thad Matta was fired and Holtmann hired to replace him.

“We should be in the hunt for the (Big Ten) championship, eventually, every single year,” Smith said in June 2017. “We should be one of those teams, and Thad had it going for a window of time, where Ohio State has a chance to always be in the hunt for the Big Ten championship.”

Your definition of “eventually” may vary, but if it’s not now, in Holtmann’s third year, it certainly starts next season, in year four. Holtmann’s remarkable debut season in 2017-18, when the Buckeyes finished second in the Big Ten and beat both No. 1 Michigan State and No. 3 Purdue, earned him a lot of worthy praise and fan faith. Last year was a reasonable step back. But then it was time to move ahead.

OSU

Ohio State's E.J. Liddell, left, looks for a teammate as Maryland's Donta Scott defends during the first half Sunday.AP

The comparison for the Holtmann era is not the worst of the Matta era. It is the best of that era, when the Buckeyes were competing for conference titles every year. I watched the tipoff Sunday anticipating a loss and curious to see how far short the Buckeyes might fall of the previous standard. A convincing home defeat would leave their athletic director’s lofty goals hanging in the air.

Instead, the win was an encapsulation of every expectation and possibility for the program. Sometimes, one win can show you a lot.

Because college basketball can’t only be about the NCAA Tournament, not when one cold shooting night can end your season. In the eight years between 2005-06 and 2012-13, Ohio State made every Big Ten game mean something. In those years, the Buckeyes were 13-7 against Big Ten teams ranked in the top-10, and 6-3 at home.

Think of the big games -- and heart-pumping wins -- against Michigan State and Wisconsin and Indiana and Michigan. That’s where Jared Sullinger, Evan Turner, David Lighty, William Buford, Jon Diebler, Aaron Craft and Deshaun Thomas left their marks on OSU fans. It wasn’t just March Madness. It was January and February Big Ten magic.

Those players and teams will always be my touchstone for OSU hoops, as they are for a generation of fans. Sunday, I tried to see Washington and Luther Muhammad and E.J. Liddell, the future of the Buckeyes, in the same light.

You could.

Holtmann saw how they competed in a back-and-forth first five minutes and knew they had a shot. He looked at his captains after halftime and told them, with a seven-point lead at the break, it was time to show who they were, and he saw the Wessons and Walker nodding back at him.

“I felt good about the look in our older guys’ eyes,” Holtmann said, and the Buckeyes opened the second half with a 7-0 run.

But it’s the younger guys who got a taste Sunday of real Ohio State Big Ten basketball for the first time. Wins over the Spartans and Boilermakers in the winter of 2018 immediately injected life into an OSU program that in Matta’s last four years had gone 1-8 against top-10 Big Ten teams. But of the healthy players on the team Sunday, only the Wessons and Kyle Young played in those games two years ago, when those wins were led by Keita Bates-Diop and Jae’Sean Tate, the smooth scorer and tough leader the Buckeyes are trying to emulate. And KBD and Tate were Matta remnants.

This was a Holtmann program win. As I watched the Buckeyes stick to Maryland on defense and grab rebounds and bury shots, I envisioned how Buford and Craft and Sullinger had done the same. A cold Sunday came to life. This was a new version of an old winning formula.

March awaits. But February matters.

“I’m just really proud of them,” Holtmann said.

He acknowledged these Buckeyes haven’t been in a lot of moments like Sunday. And he said when they were, too often they made bad decisions.

“We’ve not always responded well to these moments,” Holtmann said.

Sunday they did. They did it without Young, who hurt his ankle early and played just 10 minutes. They did it without star freshman point guard D.J. Carton, who has been away from the team for the last seven games while dealing with mental health issues.

But they did it. Because playing smart, tough and confident at home and beating the Big Ten’s best team -- that’s what Ohio State basketball is supposed to do.


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