Ohio State basketball survives upset from Cornell in NIT

The Ohio State basketball team accepted an NIT bid after not quite making the NCAA Tournament. They ended up being a two-seed and had to take on Cornell in the Schott on Tuesday night. It was the first game that the Buckeyes played since Jake Diebler was announced as the full-time head coach moving forward.

For a long stretch of the game, it looked like Diebler was going to lose his debut. The Buckeyes clearly weren’t ready for Cornell’s up-tempo style of play. They were not ready to run up and down the court as much as they did. But they did figure things out later in the game, especially in the second half. Ohio State ended up winning the game 88-83.

Jake Diebler showed poise in the Ohio State basketball win

Diebler did something that his predecessor Chris Holtmann failed to do in his tenure…show poise. The team did not panic when they were down late in the game. Diebler instilled confidence in his guys and came up with some great plays to make sure that they sealed the deal after Jamison Battle‘s three with 43 seconds gave them the lead for good.

Ohio State was very bad from the free-throw line, making just 59% of their shots from the charity stripe. That’s something that’s going to have to improve if they want to make a run at winning this tournament. One thing they did do well was rebound. They had 22 offensive rebounds and 51 overall rebounds against Cornell.

The Ohio State basketball team will take on the winner of the Virginia Tech/Richmond game on either Saturday or Sunday. It will be another game in which the Buckeyes will be favored. Perhaps it’s good that they had a scare in this first game to get it out of the way. Now, they can just relax and play their game.

I’m glad Diebler’s debut wasn’t spoiled.