Ohio State’s Chris Holtmann Says E.J. Liddell Needs More Help Offensively After Iowa Loss

The Buckeyes made just three field goals in the final 13 minutes while Liddell was double- and triple-teamed.

Although Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann believes E.J. Liddell should be in the conversation for player of the year in the Big Ten, he also knows his junior forward can’t win the conference on his own.

That was especially apparent in Saturday’s 75-62 loss to Iowa, when Liddell scored 15 points, pulled down eight rebounds and blocked five shots but was double- and triple- teamed down low in the second half, and the Buckeyes’ offense went stagnant.

In fact, Ohio State made just three field goals in the final 13 minutes of the game, which allowed the Hawkeyes to turn a 49-49 game into a 13-point victory on the road.

“We’ve got to have some guys a little more ready to shoot than what they were,” Holtmann said after the game. “We need more offensive firepower from guys other than E.J. We’ve got to find ways to help our guys in that way across the board.”

Freshman forward Malaki Branham and fifth-year senior Kyle Young were both in double figures with 22 and 10 points apiece, but the rest of the team combined to go 4-for-17 from the field and 0-for-7 from behind the three-point line.

Simply put, if the Buckeyes make half of those shots, they easily extent their home winning steak to 12 instead of suffering their first loss at Value City Arena this season.

“They played some good defense,” Liddell said. “They made me see crowds. There were a lot of bodies every time I touched the ball. They just did a great job on defense today.

“Every time I touched the ball, there were two or three people around me. Some drives I had I could’ve done better. They emphasized taking us out of our stuff and they did a great job with that.”

While the Ohio State has clear deficiencies on the offensive side of the ball, the Buckeyes can’t dwell on the loss for too long with Indiana coming to Columbus on Monday night (7 p.m. on FS1), as the Hoosiers won their first meeting, 67-51, in Bloomington back on Jan. 6.

“This is big boy basketball. You’ve got to be able to learn from it and move forward,” Holtmann said. “The world is not coming to an end. I just called my wife. She waist tears and I had to console here. I’m going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine.

“We’ll live to fight another day. We’ll get better. This is life in a big conference. We have to correct our errors and find a way to be better. We have a really difficult stretch coming up. We’ve got to figure out how to rest our guys, too, but we’ll move forward. Hopefully we can coach and play better the next time out.”

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