Bates-Diop due rest after big minutes
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — For No. 16 Ohio State to close its regular season with a win, it needed its All-America candidate to return to playing in that form.
Keita Bates-Diop didn’t shoot the ball with great efficiency in a double-overtime win Friday against Indiana, but the Buckeyes rode him for a career-high 45 minutes to keep their hopes for a Big Ten title alive.
He responded with 24 points, 14 rebounds, four blocks, four assists and two steals. The points were the most from Bates-Diop since he scored a career-high 35 against Illinois on Feb. 4, and the rebounds tied a career high.
His production made it almost impossible for coach Chris Holtmann to take him out of the lineup.
“I didn’t want to play Keita Bates-Diop 45 minutes, but I kept saying, ‘Do I want to win?’” Holtmann said. “He’s going to have a few days off here. We just rode him because we needed to.”
The junior shot less than 50 percent from the field in five straight games, and fatigue has clearly been a factor. After the game, BatesDiop said that he felt fine but would certainly feel the effects when he awoke Saturday.
With a win to celebrate, Bates-Diop wasn’t too concerned about needing 24 shots to get to his point total. He was coming off a season-low six points Tuesday against Rutgers.
“It felt great,” he said of his performance against Indiana. “Obviously, I’ve been struggling the last couple of games, but tonight I felt I got into a rhythm. It was really a team effort. We had a lot of assists.”
Ohio State can clinch a share of the Big Ten title and the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament if Michigan State loses Sunday at Wisconsin. Either way, the Buckeyes will have a full week of rest before they open postseason play.
Not on the itinerary for junior guard C.J. Jackson: watching the Spartans.
“We’ve got to hope and see now,” he said. “We did all we could tonight, handling business here. We’ve just got to wait and see and be ready for the Big Ten tournament.”
Rest is the No. 1 thing that Holtmann said Ohio State — and Bates-Diop in particular — will need. Down the stretch against the Hoosiers, Holtmann said he had to use one timeout specifically to give Jae’Sean Tate a break because he “literally couldn’t function.”
Bates-Diop was 4 of 7 from the free-throw line, a statistic that particularly irks him.
“I think he’s gaining in confidence,” Holtmann said. “He missed some free throws he usually makes. That really bothers him when he misses free throws. I thought he did impact the game in a lot of ways.”