Ohio State Basketball: Blueprint for Buckeyes to Peak Before the Postseason

Good luck trying to figure out the Ohio State basketball team this season. In fact, good luck figuring out the entire Big Ten conference.

In a league that has featured an unpredictable score seemingly every night, the Buckeyes have personified inconsistency. One night they are walking into the Kohl Center and winning at Wisconsin for only the second time in Thad Matta’s tenure, and the next they are losing at home to Penn State.

The result is a 7-6 Big Ten record after posting a perfect 13-0 mark in nonconference play.

Part of the struggles can be attributed to the overall strength of the league as a whole, but perhaps an ugly win at Illinois can turn things around. Aaron Craft certainly hoped so in comments he made to reporters after the game that were passed along by Kyle Rowland of Eleven Warriors:

We have not played our best basketball in this building. We just wanted to find a way to end that. Did we play perfect? No. There are definitely things we can get better on. But we found a way to win and that’s huge, especially going forward.

Peaking going forward is exactly what needs to happen for the Buckeyes as March approaches. Here are a few things they can do to make sure they do.

Box out

Simply saying “box out” is simplifying what could be Ohio State’s main problem just a bit, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

The Scarlet and Gray ranked 229th in the country in total rebounding as of Monday, which is frankly an abysmal…

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