Ohio State Dominates Second Half, Beats Northwestern 76-60

OSU LogoNorthwestern hadn’t beaten Ohio State in the last 8 tries and hadn’t won in Columbus since 1977. It appeared in the early going that they might have a chance, even taking a 9 point lead over the Buckeyes at one point in the first half. Then, of course, Ohio State got going. With Northwestern up 25-16 with a little over 7 minutes left in the first half, Ohio State closed on a 21-8 run to take a 4 point lead at the half. Ohio State outscored Northwestern 39-27 in the second half to beat the Wildcats, now 12-14 and 5-8 in conference play, 76-60. Ohio State improved their record to 21-6 overall and 8-6 in conference play.

LaQuinton Ross lead the Buckeyes in points with 16 to go along with 6 rebounds. Ross also led Ohio State in ejections as he was thrown out for shoving Northwestern’s Nikola Cerina and Drew Crawford. He appeared to be coming to the aid of teammate Amir Williams who was being driven out of bounds by Cerina and was a couple of inches away from being on the business end of Cerina’s punch. While no shove or punch should be viewed as a positive, Ross’ show of emotion for his teammate was something that appeared to be lacking with this team just a few short weeks ago.
As I have written about several times here, this team goes as Lenzelle Smith Jr. goes. And go he did. He had a double double with 14 points and 10 rebounds. He will continue to be the steering wheel to Aaron Craft’s engine and Ross’ gas pedal as this team makes to drive towards the Final Four.

Northwestern got an outstanding effort from Drew Crawford as he went for a game high 22 points on 8-13 shooting and appeared to be unguardable at times. Though it does not appear this will be the year Northwestern makes to NCAA tournament, head coach Chris Collins has a couple of pieces to make a run in the next couple of years.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: