Buckeyes Hang on Against a Resilient UNC Asheville Team
Another close call for Ohio State.
Ohio State finished their non conference schedule on Thursday night with a sloppy 79-77 victory over UNC Asheville. The Buckeyes danced with the devil all night as they could not seem to put the Bulldogs away, leading 62-52 with 7 minutes to go, but some costly turnovers and timely shots by UNC Asheville made this a game real quick. Then it seemed like the Buckeyes lost their cool.
With 6 minutes left, Marc Loving got called for traveling and appeared to say something to the officials that caused him to get a technical and UNC Asheville used this opportunity to make it 62-61. Then after some back and forth baskets for about 2 minutes, Trevor Thompson picked up a very questionable technical foul and that gave him his fifth foul and ended his night.
Thankfully, with about 2 minutes to go and the Buckeyes down 67-69, it became the Ja’Quan Lyle show. Lyle rattled off eight straight points and gave Ohio State a 75-71 lead and that would be the deciding factor of this ballgame. CJ Jackson and Kam Williams both hit two free throws to end the game and the Buckeyes held on to finish their non conference slate at a respectable 10-3.
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Jae’Sean Tate led the way with 17 points and Trevor Thompson picked up his fourth double-double in six games, while Freshman MaCio Teague had 23 for the Bulldogs to lead all scorers. This was a huge win for Ohio State to grind it out and finish strong because a loss would have been devastating heading into the trenches of the Big Ten.
It was a great sign to see someone on this fairly young team step up and take over the game like Ja’Quan Lyle did and we finally saw the Sophomore point guard show some much-needed leadership. The Buckeyes committed costly turnovers and sometimes looked stagnant on offense, so those are some things they will need to fix going into conference play. Also, they were a not so great 18-26 from the line, but finished 4-4 so they hit them when they really needed to in crunch time.
Ohio State opens up conference play on January 1st at Illinois and then they come home to play #15 Purdue on the 5th.
