The Ohio State Buckeyes men’s basketball team represents The Ohio State University in NCAA Division I college basketball competition. The Buckeyes are a member of the Big Ten Conference. The Buckeyes play their home games at Value City Arena in the Jerome Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, which opened in 1998.
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The Ohio State basketball team has enough talent to make a deep run in March. They are good enough to beat some strong teams in the NCAA Tournament. They have two stud players in E.J. Liddell and Malaki Branham. There’s one key to making a deep run for this team though.
That key is rebounding. Rebounding has been an issue in some of Ohio State’s losses. When they lost to Iowa, it was rebounding that killed them. Specifically, allowing a high volume of offensive rebounds. The Buckeyes need to avoid doing that in March.
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Ohio State has some moments of good rebounding. The game at Minnesota comes to mind. In that game, they dominated the boards from start to finish. The Ohio State basketball team isn’t a particularly tall team, so they have to be good at boxing out opponents.
That’s what they did well against Illinois. That’s what they have to do the rest of the way in the regular season. Good rebounding now will be good practice for what they’ll have to do in the Tournament. Ohio State is good enough offensively and defensively to stay in most games.
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Only time will tell if Chris Holtmann can get his squad to rebound the ball better. It’s the biggest weakness with this team and it’s the thing that can get them beat on any given night if the shots aren’t falling offensively.
Right now, the Buckeyes are 201st in the country in rebounds per game with 39.4. That’s only good enough for 10th in the Big Ten. That rate has to go up if the Buckeyes want to be any good in the NCAA Tournament against some of the best teams in the country.
