The Ohio State basketball team headed to Champaign, Illinois riding a three-game winning streak as it faced off with Illini in a Big Ten road contest on Sunday. The Buckeyes competed and shot the ball well in the first half, but couldn’t keep the same effort going in the second half on the way to a 87-79 loss.
The Buckeyes came out of the gate hot behind 19 first-half points from Devin Royal and took a 42-36 lead into the break. Ohio State began the second half well enough but then had a hard time stopping an Illinois team that decided to start driving the basketball to the hoop rather than settling for outside three-point attempts. The result was a major deficiency in scoring in the paint and a decided free-throw disadvantage. Illinois scored 52 vs. Ohio State’s 38 points on the block and nailed 23-of-31 free throws to the Buckeyes’ 14-of-15. The Illini also outrebounded OSU by a margin of 43 to 31.
Amazingly enough, Ohio State had 15 more shot attempts (73 to 58) but still lost the contest because of extremely poor shooting in the second half that resulted in 37% from the floor for the game.
Royal led the Buckeyes in scoring, pouring in 29 points on 10-of-18 shooting, including 3-of-6 from three-point range. Bruce Thornton (22) and John Mobley Jr. (18) also finished in double figures, but they took a high volume of shots to get to that mark.
With the loss, Ohio State drops to under .500 in the Big Ten at 5-6, and the Buckeyes fall to 13-9 overall. This team is still in bubble territory as the back end of the conference season gets going. The Scarlet and Gray will next be in action at home against Maryland on Thursday.
This article originally appeared on Buckeyes Wire: Ohio State basketball drops road contest to Illinois on the road
