 got a feel-good win on senior night, coming on the heels of tough road losses to Penn State and Michigan that dropped them out of first place in the conference.Corey Sanders had 12 points for the Scarlet Knights (13-17, 3-14). They've lost eight of their last nine games.Keita Bates-Diop, Ohio State's best player who missed most of last season to a leg injury, continued to struggle with his shooting. After starting the month as the likely candidate for Big Ten Player of the Year, he has had trouble scoring against more aggressive defenses. He had just six points against Rutgers on 3-for-11 shooting.Bates-Diop has a year of eligibility remaining but likely will leave for the NBA. He graduated from Ohio State in December.Jae'Sean Tate, also playing his last game at Value City Arena, had nine points and 10 rebounds.Ohio State led 32-27 at the half. The Buckeyes had built a 19-point lead coming off an 11-0 run with 5:41 left in the half but then went cold. Rutgers put together a 16-2 run to finish the half, during which Ohio State went 1 for 8 from the floor.But Rutgers, one of the nation's worst offensive teams, opened the second half 1 for 8, and Ohio State took control with an 18-2 run.BIG PICTURERutgers: The Scarlet Knights took advantage of a period of cold shooting by Ohio State but just didn't have the talent to keep it up in the second half.Ohio State: Buckeyes did what was expected against a poor team after dropping two on the road. They will need some help to win the regular-season conference title, but they've been one of the college basketball's best stories this season.UP NEXTRutgers: Finishes regular season Sunday at Illinois.Ohio State: Finishes Friday at Indiana.---More college basketball at www.collegebasketball.ap.org and https://twitter.com/-Top25.---Follow Mitch Stacy at http://twitter.com/mitchstacy)
Feb 19, 2018 COLUMBUS, Ohio -- It seemed only a matter of time before reality set in and Ohio State fell back to earth after an otherworldly 13-1 start in Big Ten play under first-year coach Chris Holtmann.The Buckeyes crashed last week, losing back-to-back road games to Penn State and Michigan.As a result, Ohio State (22-7, 13-3 Big Ten) dropped from No. 8 to No. 16 in the latest Associated Press poll and out of first place in the Big Ten standings.Ohio State returns to action just two days after a 74-62 loss at No. 17 Michigan on Sunday, playing host to Rutgers (13-16, 3-13) on Tuesday night in its final home game of the regular season."Our top priority is to get the win," Ohio State senior forward Jae'Sean Tate said Monday. "We have a sour taste in our mouth losing two back-to-back on the road. We know what it takes, and we've shown that we have what it takes." Now tied with ninth-ranked Purdue (24-5, 13-3) for second in the conference, Ohio State will need to win its final two games (Rutgers, at Indiana) and hope for a loss by conference-leading and second-ranked Michigan State (Illinois, at Wisconsin) to have a shot at a Big Ten title.If the Buckeyes can at least hold onto second place and the Boilermakers (at Illinois, home vs. Minnesota) win out, they'd win a tiebreaker for the second seed in the conference tournament next week at Madison Square Garden in New York. The top four seeds receive byes in the first two rounds and won't play until March 2."We're still not satisfied where we are," Tate said. "Our whole goal is to get back to where we were a couple of weeks ago and make noise in the Big Ten Tournament." Three Ohio State seniors -- Tate, Kam Williams and Andrew Dakich -- will play for the final time at Value City Arena against Rutgers. The Buckeyes also will honor leading scorer and rebounder Keita Bates-Diop, a redshirt junior who graduated in December and has one year of eligibility remaining but apparently plans to enter the 2018 NBA Draft."To make it a happy senior night, we've got to take care of business," Williams said. "That's job number one. It's been a nice ride and it'd be nice to get a win for my last game at Ohio State." Tate led Ohio State in the loss at Michigan with game highs of 20 points and 15 rebounds. Bates-Diop checked in with 17 points and seven rebounds, but the Buckeyes' reserves were outscored 26-6 by the Wolverines' bench in addition to allowing 22 points off turnovers."The message is to continually tweak and improve the areas we've been exposed in -- challenge our guys to be tougher and be smarter," Holtmann said. "That's what it's about." Rutgers is trying to escape the Big Ten basement. The Scarlet Knights are tied at the bottom of the standings with Iowa after a 61-51 loss at Maryland on Saturday.Rutgers guard Corey Sanders was held to six points on 3-for-14 shooting by Maryland after scoring 30 in overtime three days earlier against Northwestern in one of the Scarlet Knights' three Big Ten victories."Nothing's easy in this league," Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell said. "This is the best league in the country -- I don't care what anybody says -- from top to bottom the best league. Trying to win on the road in this league is as hard as any league in the country. You gotta keep fighting."We gotta continue to work through it. We got three wins right now in the league, that's what we had last season at the end. We got a couple more games to make that a little bit better."
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