Ohio State will be eager to rebound from a loss to No. 13 Illinois when the Buckeyes play West Virgina on Saturday night in Cleveland.
Ohio State (7-2) fell 88-80 to the Fighting Illini on Tuesday, leaving Buckeyes coach Jake Diebler upset that his team couldn’t pull off the upset. Ohio State was down by only three points with about a minute remaining.
“Hungry. Hungry to get better but hungry going into a game (Saturday) that’s a big opportunity for us,” he said. “The things we can control, we didn’t do good enough (vs. Illinois). That’s the biggest thing, taking ownership of that. Basketball is an imperfect game, but there were stretches where we hurt ourselves.
“When we have the opportunity, we have to play more poised. We have to play together. We’ve got to do all that and kind of seize the momentum so we can start to build something better.”
The Mountaineers (8-3) are coming off a 90-58 win over Little Rock in a Tuesday game in which Honor Huff scored 24 points. He pilots the team with an average of 17.3 points per game and entered the weekend leading the country with 44 3-point field goals.
But Diebler pointed to him as the key to a defense he called “tough and disruptive.”
West Virginia is in the top three nationally in scoring defense (58.4 ppg) and will concentrate on containing Bruce Thornton. His 34 points vs. Illinois raised his season average to a team-high 21.7 ppg.
Mountaineers coach Ross Hodge sees the Ohio State offense and has flashbacks to his team’s 75-66 setback to Wake Forest on Dec. 6.
“Similar to the Wake Forest game when you are facing a really good offensive team like Ohio State, and in particular a really good offensive player like Bruce Thornton, the last thing you want to do is give them easy (baskets),” Hodge said. “Whether that’s an easy look or your turnovers leading to easy baskets. They are going to put you in enough difficult positions as is, and you don’t want to do anything to add to that.”
This will be the third time the neighboring programs have played in Cleveland. Ohio State won in 2023, and the Mountaineers prevailed four years earlier.
