Ohio State continues to build their post season resume with another conference victory. The Buckeyes treated the home crowd to a 68-52 win over Purdue and improved their record to 17-8. The difference was from three-point range where the Buckeyes were 9-20 and the Boilermakers were only 4-20. Kyle Young paced the scoring with a career high 16 points, also adding 8 rebounds.

After an empty possessions by both teams, Kaleb Wesson opens the scoring with a long three to allow the Buckeyes to start with 3-0 lead. Purdue’s Jahaad Proctor returns the favor with a three to tie the score 3-3 at the 18:16 mark. This would be the last time this afternoon that the game would be tied. Brother Andre Wesson snaps off a jumper behind the arch and captures the lead once again 6-3. Andre is shooting a solid 46% from outside the stripe this year. The Wesson show continues as Kaleb finds Kyle Young under the basket and quickly it is 8-3 Buckeyes.

OSU continued to move the ball down the floor quickly as CJ Walker drives the length of the floor for a sure lay-up that was blocked but called goal-tending. It was clear Coach Holtmann was wanting to start fast out of the gate against the Boilermakers. The block stopped the clock so the Bucks had a 10-3 at the first media time-out.

Out of the stoppage of play, Purdue’s Eric Hunter Jr to stop the bleeding a bit but CJ Walker followed his own 3, then a steal which he once again drove to the basket for his 7th straight point for the Buckeyes and all of the sudden it was 15-6 with the OSU clearly setting the pace.

At the 11:54 spot on the clock, Kaleb Wesson drew a foul along the baseline.  This was significant as it was the first foul called in the game.  It was also the point when Coach Holtmann decided to take Wesson out of the game. From there, the game changed Purdue clearly changed their strategy to bring the ball directly inside. In just a couple of possessions, they had reduced the Buckeye lead to four, at 16-12. Holtmann brings Kaleb back in to help stop the bleeding. That made all the difference as after a couple of 3-point goals by Duane Washington Jr, and Justin Ahrens, and the lead was comfortably back up to 24-12, forcing Purdue to call a second time-out. At this point OSU is 5-7 from 3’s with 5 different Buckeyes draining the net.

Unfortunately for Ohio State Kaleb Wesson picked up his second foul and heads back to the bench with the Buckeyes only two fouls of the game. Once again, Purdue goes back inside, fortunately not all the attempts were falling. But the Buckeyes look out of sync on offense and are not able to add to their lead. This was feeling a little like the Wisconsin game that was tied 15-15 when Wesson went out.  The Badgers took advantage and never looked back.  Could Purdue do the same thing?