NEW YORK — More than half of Ohio State’s first-half points Saturday — 24 of 39, to be exact — were in the paint.
On the first possession of the second half, OSU forward Devin Royal drove to the basket and finished off the glass over a pair of Kentucky defenders.
So much for halftime adjustments.
The Wildcats’ interior defense was exposed, repeatedly, as the Buckeyes bullied Mark Pope’s club all night. It wasn’t a winning formula for No. 4 Kentucky.
It ultimately doomed UK to an 85-65 loss in a CBS Sports Classic clash at Madison Square Garden.
“A ton of credit to Ohio State,” Pope said. “They beat us in pretty much every facet of the game. … Congratulations to them.”
Pope said his players did everything they could to summon more energy — or as he commonly refers to it, “juice” — and fight.
The Wildcats (10-2) simply never got into a rhythm defensively, failing to string together stops. The Buckeyes (8-4) finished with 36 points in the paint. And though Ohio State scored half as many points in the paint in the final 20 minutes (12) as it did in the opening 20, its efforts before intermission paid dividends after.
Having to account for being beat off the dribble with regularity, UK sagged off OSU shooters on the perimeter. The Buckeyes obliged by knocking down their open opportunities.
Further proof: Ohio State set season highs for a Kentucky opponent in field-goal percentage (56.6; 30 of 53) and points per possession (1.349).
“I needed to help these guys more on the defensive end,” Pope said, “and we just couldn’t find an answer there.”
About those occasions Ohio State didn’t cap a possession at the rim with a made basket?
The Buckeyes made the Wildcats pay another way: at the free-throw line.
OSU went to the charity stripe 24 times in the second half, sinking 18 of them — a conversion rate of 75%.
“I feel like we just kept attacking,” said Ohio State freshman guard John Mobley Jr., who had 15 points, three rebounds and three assists. “That was the game plan: just keep attacking.”
No Buckeye did that more than junior guard Bruce Thornton, who gave the Wildcats fits all night. Thornton exploded for a game- and career-high 30 points on 8-of-13 shooting from the field and a 13-for-14 showing at the free-throw line.
“At the end of the day, Thornton was too good for us. … He was just too good for us today,” Pope said. “Kind of everything we tried, (it) seemed like he had a pretty good answer for us.”
He became the first opposing player to score at least 30 against UK since the player who ended the John Calipari era: Oakland’s Jack Gohlke, who poured in 32 (on 10 made 3s) in last season’s first-round NCAA Tournament shocker.
“Bruce did what we know Bruce is capable of and love about him: He can manage a game but also do it with scoring,” Ohio State coach Jake Diebler said. “So it’s a great comfort as a coach to have a point guard like that.”
Perhaps Pope’s biggest frustration wasn’t that Thornton and his teammates torched the Wildcats’ defense so routinely; it’s that the mistakes bled over into the offense. Unlike Ohio State, UK didn’t make hay in the paint.
Kentucky went just 7 for 23 (30.4%) on layups in Saturday’s 20-point setback.
“We knew going into the game that they helped a lot (defensively), especially once we got into the paint,” said Andrew Carr, UK’s fifth-year senior forward who had 13 points but missed six of his nine shots from the field. “Felt like we probably could have done a better job of, when things aren’t going our way, to play off two feet — go back to the fundamentals of the game — and (stop) at the rim, and we’d be able to get whatever we wanted.
“Definitely something to learn and improve on.”
Pope vows his team will do just that.
“I know exactly how these guys will respond: They’re going to really, really try as hard as they can to not let this destroy their couple days off,” he said. “Their job is to get really fresh right now (before) we get back together on the 26th.
“And I know these guys. They’ll come in and — it’s not going to be just empty emotion. It’s going to be like, ‘We’re going to get better.’ And these guys will get better. We’ve just got to keep trusting what we do.”
For now, UK will have to sit with this one-sided defeat during its longest stretch of the season between games. It won’t take the floor again until New Year’s Eve — 10 days after Saturday’s loss. That day, Kentucky welcomes Ivy League representative Brown to Rupp Arena.
The respite will give Pope and his staff time to focus on what he called the team’s “default” mode: bad habits.
“It’s not bad habits coming from a bad place in guys’ hearts,” he said. “It’s coming from a great place. It’s coming from a desperation to help our team. But we don’t do that by ourselves. We do it disciplined, and we do it the way we do it, and we do it by making plays for each other.”
Developing that level of trust only takes hold with the benefit of time.
Which Pope might view as the lone positive from an otherwise listless showing, which he admitted was “incredibly painful” to endure.
“Sometimes when things go wrong, you can build your trust because you get to see, ‘Hey, this doesn’t work when we try to do this way.’
“But these guys will respond beautifully, because they’re incredible young men and they’ll come back and work like crazy.”
Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at rblack@gannett.com and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.
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