Penn State aims to continue mastery of No. 13 Ohio State (Mar 01, 2018)
NEW YORK -- Penn State hopes to continue its mastery over No. 13 Ohio State when it faces the Buckeyes in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament on Friday at Madison Square Garden.
The seventh-seeded Nittany Lions (20-12) turned back the Buckeyes 82-79 on Jan. 25 for Ohio State's lone home conference loss of the season and 79-56 on Feb. 15 at Happy Valley.
Penn State advanced into the quarterfinals with a 65-57 victory over Northwestern on Thursday behind 25 points from Tony Carr, the Big Ten's leading scorer. However, he's cautious about playing second-seeded Ohio State for the third time this season.
"We just want to defend and rebound like we did those past two games," Carr said. "To be honest, I haven't thought about it. I just want to celebrate this with my team and my coaches. We earned it and we'll talk about that tomorrow."
Carr averaged 29 points in those two games, but Nittany Lions coach Pat Chambers warns those games are far in the past.
"This is a new slate, new game," Chambers said. "We've got to prepare for everything. I'll enjoy this for the next I don't know 30 minutes we'll start working on Ohio State.
"We're going to throw the records out and be ready to compete against a very well-coached team in Chris Holtmann.
"I'll let them see some successes because I want my team to be positive, upbeat and confident. Just really try to get better. That's our goal, try to get better. Don't worry about outcomes, like Tony said. We don't talk about outcomes. We talk about just getting better and control what we can control."
The Nittany Lions set a program-high for made 3-point field goals in a tournament game with 13, the most in the tournament since Maryland dropped in 13 in 2015.
Ohio State (24-7) features the Big Ten Player of the Year and the Coach of the Year in Keita Bates-Diop and Holtmann, respectively. Holtmann has earned that distinction in the three conferences he's coached in -- the Big South in 2013 at Gardner-Webb, the Big East at Butler (2017) and this season, when he led the Buckeyes to the most wins under a first-year coach at the school.
"It's as surprising as maybe I've ever seen in coaching, because you can't anticipate the kind of start that we had," Holtmann said earlier in the week. "You just never expect that as a coach. To finish 15-3, we have a really good league and while it may not be quite as powerful as it's been in years past, it's a really good league."
Ohio State went 5-3 in November.
Bates-Diop is the first Ohio State player to earn first-team all-Big Ten honors since D'Angelo Russell in 2015. He averaged 19.2 points and 8.9 rebounds, both team-high marks, while being named Big Ten Player of the Week four times and national player of the week once.
Bates-Diop is a candidate for multiple national player of the year awards including the John R. Wooden Award, the Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year Award, the Naismith Award and the Oscar Robertson Trophy.
Ohio State has played more games (45) in the Big Tn Tournament than any other league school. It also has the most wins (29).
Penn State isn't just built around Carr. Mike Watkins leads the Big Ten in field goal percentage (68.5) and Josh Reaves is tops in steals at 2.4 per game. Shep Garner is second in 3-pointers with 88.
