The IU men’s basketball team will carry its momentum from two straight wins into Columbus, Ohio, where it will play No. 4 Ohio State on Saturday.
The Hoosiers overcame double-digit deficits in both wins to come out with the victory. They did what they struggled so much to do earlier in the season — finish the game.
“I just think that here lately, we've done a better job of executing later in the game just so we can get a shot up,” IU head coach Archie Miller said after his team’s win at Northwestern on Wednesday. “I think so many times in overtime, in our earlier games, we struggled to execute, we struggled to be able to get a quality shot. And I think right now we're doing a little better job of just putting the ball in our guards hands.”
But the Buckeyes present a problem for the Hoosiers who are looking to extend their win streak. Ohio State is third in the Big Ten behind Michigan and Illinois and has a 10-4 record in conference play.
Sophomore forward E.J. Liddell averages 15 points and seven rebounds per game for the Buckeyes, both of which are team highs. Junior guard Justin Ahrens is third in the Big Ten in 3-pointers made and shooting 48% from beyond the arc.
Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann will bring an impressive squad, but Miller’s team has won five of its last six against AP top-10 teams since 2019.
This game also marks a homecoming for sophomore forward Jerome Hunter, who graduated from Pickerington North High School just outside of Columbus.
To defeat another top-10 opponent, the Hoosiers will have to limit turnovers and shoot much better and more consistently from the free-throw line. Miller said his team needs to be more disciplined.
“As we watch film as a team, there's some things that if we could just clean up our discipline in terms of some unnecessary fouling, if we can clean up our transition defense a little bit better and we continue to take care of the ball, and especially execute late a little bit better with screening and getting the ball where we want to get to, to me, we still have a lot of room to grow,” Miller said during a press conference Tuesday.
