NEW YORK — Ohio State’s men’s basketball team entered this week at a pivotal point in its season.
The Buckeyes were coming off a 38-point loss to Auburn last weekend, their third defeat in four games. In addition to the on-court struggles, Ohio State announced Tuesday that senior guard Meechie Johnson Jr., who started the first 10 games of the season, was taking a leave of absence for personal reasons.
It was nothing a trip to New York to face red-hot No. 4 Kentucky couldn’t solve, as Ohio State upset the Wildcats 85-65 in the second game of the CBS Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.
Ohio State guard Bruce Thornton led the way with 30 points, setting the tone early with continued aggressive drives to the rim and then making big shots in the second half. Kentucky didn’t have an answer for Thornton’s ability to get into the lane and finish in traffic; he had a response every time the Wildcats looked to cut into the lead in the second half.
The Buckeyes, who improved to 8-4, took control late in the first half and Kentucky didn’t get within six points the rest of the game.
“I feel like our preparation these last couple days and how it’s presented [to] the team has been awesome,” Thornton said. “We understood the game plan with Kentucky, understood we could get downhill after the guards. The game was opening up … and we were able to get downhill.”
Freshman guard John Mobley entered Saturday as one of the elite 3-point shooters in the country but went just 1-for-8 from behind the arc. Like Thornton, though, he was able to get to the basket, making a career-high four 2-pointers.
“I feel like we just kept attacking,” Mobley said. “That was the game plan, just keep attacking. We were very connected on offense, so we definitely just kept attacking, stuck with the game plan.”
The returns of Aaron Bradshaw and Ques Glover, two players who missed the last month for different reasons, provided a sizable lift for Jake Diebler’s team.
Bradshaw, who transferred to Ohio State from Kentucky last spring, had missed the past seven games because of a university investigation. He came off the bench Saturday to score 11 points and was a key factor at the rim defensively. Glover, who briefly signed for Mark Pope at BYU in 2023, was out the past eight games with an ankle injury — and he came off the bench to score nine points.
“I thought it was a significant boost,” Diebler said. “We felt like going into this year, depth was going to be a real strength for us, and we haven’t had an opportunity to play with that depth much of this year. It’s also impacted practice and building because there’s still a lot of newness in this program. New staff, new players, new system and it’s impacted, I think, our growth a little bit.
“But it was nice to have some depth tonight, and those guys certainly stepped up.”
Kentucky lost for just the second time all season, snapping a three-game winning streak that included an overtime win over Gonzaga in Seattle and a home victory over rival Louisville last weekend. The Wildcats, one of the highest-volume perimeter shooting teams in the country, had their worst shooting night of the season, going just 4-for-22 from the 3-point line. Perhaps more importantly, they also really struggled to finish at the rim, shooting 37.1% inside the arc and just 7-for-23 on layups.
“I think we kind of knew going into the game that they helped a lot, especially once we got into the paint,” Kentucky big man Andrew Carr said. “Felt like we probably could have done a better job when things aren’t going our way to play off two feet, go back to the fundamentals of the game … Definitely something to learn and improve on.”
“There were a bunch of possessions our guys wish they could get back,” Pope added.
Kentucky has now allowed at least one point per possession in each of its past five games after not allowing any of its first seven opponents — including Duke — to reach that mark. Teams are shooting nearly 55% from inside the arc against Kentucky in those five games.
At the other end, Kentucky’s two worst offensive performances — and two worst 3-point shooting performances — have come in its two losses. Over that five-game span, the Wildcats are shooting 31% from 3 and rank No. 175 in 3-point attempt rate. For context, Pope’s BYU team last season ranked fourth nationally in 3-point attempt rate.
The Wildcats (10-2) have 10 days off before hosting Brown on New Year’s Eve and then getting right into SEC play: home vs. Florida, at Georgia, at Mississippi State, home vs. Texas A&M, home vs. Alabama.
“I know these guys,” Pope said. “They’ll come in and — it’s not going to be just empty emotion. It’s going to be like, we’re going to get better, and these guys will get better, and we’ve just got to keep trusting what we do. We had some defensive struggles tonight and then we just fell to pieces offensively, and we just went to our default, and our default is not right yet. Our default is still bad habits.
“But these guys will respond beautifully because they’re incredible young men and they’ll come back and work like crazy and they know who they represent and how much it means, and it’s incredibly painful to lose this game. But they’ll respond.”
