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Ohio State nearly has historic opener on offense and defense vs. IU Indy: Takeaways
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- Ohio State nearly has historic opener on offense and defense vs. IU Indy: Takeaways
The Ohio State men's basketball team had just put up 118 points, and the two players who combined for 54 of those points were clustered around a stat sheet.
In the immediate aftermath of a season-opening, 118-102 win against IU Indy on Nov. 3, seniors Bruce Thornton and Christoph Tilly had plenty to analyze. The Buckeyes came three points shy of tying the program's all-time scoring record, shot 63.0% from the floor and still only managed to win by 16 points against a men's basketball team with four players who played Division II ball last year before following their coach to IU Indy.
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Four Buckeyes scored in double figures. Ohio State set a program record with 42 made free throws. However, that was nearly overshadowed by the fact that the Jaguars became the first team to score 100 points in regulation against Ohio State since Purdue had 107 on Feb. 7, 1998. They made half of their field goals in each half.
What were Thornton and Tilly looking at as they examined the stat sheet?
"The good or the bad?" Thornton said. "Let's start with the good."
That was the theme of the first postgame press conference of the season. While Thornton, Tilly and coach Jake Diebler had plenty to quibble about, all three were more pleased with the outcome than might have been expected.
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"I felt like we shared the ball a lot," Thornton said. "Got to the free-throw line."
That summed up a lot of the good. Then came the, if not bad, the less good.
"Defensively, I feel like we had a lot of breakdowns at the end of the shot clock," Thornton said. "We'd guard for 20, 25 seconds and then a miscommunication and not grabbing the rebound, not understanding what you need to do to win big games. It hurt us today most definitely, but we're understanding what we need to do and get to the drawing board."
Added Tilly: "What he said. I think we did a good job offensively, but defensively, we've still got to work on some stuff, obviously. They scored over 100 points. That can't happen."
The Ohio State Buckeyes huddle during the NCAA men's basketball game against the IU Indy Jaguars at Value City Arena in Columbus on Nov. 3, 2025. Ohio State won the season opener 118-102.
It can happen when a team has as many opportunities as the Jaguars did. IU Indy finished the game with 82 possessions, two more than the Buckeyes, meaning that a 40-minute game featured 162 combined possessions – each one lasting an average of 15 seconds.
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That's four possessions a minute. By way of comparison, Ohio State beat Nebraska 116-114 in double-overtime last season. That game featured 167 possessions in 50 minutes of basketball. This season's opener was the second-fastest Ohio State game in the history of KenPom.com, trailing only a 107-69 win against VMI on Nov. 10, 2006.
Diebler called it a unique game against an opponent with a unique style. With that comes unusual challenges and results, but a few numbers stood out to him as being unacceptable regardless of opponent.
"The 50% (shooting) stands out," he said. "Only six steals stands out right away. They made some tough shots. Defensively, the field goal percentage is obviously not good enough. We've got to get more deflections, we've got to be more active, pressure more defensively."
Here are five takeaways from Ohio State's win against IU Indy.
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More: Who headlines our 2025-26 Ohio State men's basketball preseason power rankings?
This game had no flow
To be blunt, it was tough to find any sort of rhythm in a game that took 2:20 of real time to play 40 minutes of basketball. Of the nine Jaguars to play more than six minutes, eight had at least three fouls and three fouled out. That sent the Buckeyes to the line 53 times, the third-highest mark in program history and the most since the Buckeyes took a program-record 56 free throws against Wisconsin on Feb. 20, 1956.
Everything was fast-paced, often to the detriment of anything resembling a clean game, even though the two teams combined for 220 points.
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"Their system and style, it's relentless," Diebler said. "If you hesitate or slow down, they can turn you over three times in a row."
Thornton likened the pace to that of an NBA game.
"That was fun," he said.
Ohio State nearly set a scoring record
The Buckeyes came up just shy of scoring more points in a single game than any team in program history. The Ohio State record is 121, set against George Mason on Jan. 8, 1995.
Against the Jaguars, Ohio State went 34 for 54 (63.0%) from the floor but just 8 for 22 (36.4%) from 3-point range. More concerning to Diebler was that after committing only four first-half turnovers, the Buckeyes had 13 in the second half.
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Given how well the Buckeyes were scoring, the record was well within reach if not for the turnovers. Sophomore John Mobley had a team-high five, although he did dish out eight assists, and Wright State transfer Brandon Noel had four but pulled down a game-high 10 rebounds.
"We wanted to meet aggression with aggression tonight and play aggressive," Diebler said. "Our guys did a good job with that. We got a little sloppy at times, which is part of it."
Ohio State Buckeyes center Christoph Tilly (13) takes the opening tipoff against IU Indy Jaguars guard Jaxon Edwards (0) during the NCAA men's basketball game at Value City Arena in Columbus on Nov. 3, 2025.
Ohio State's shots almost exclusively came either at the rim or from the 3-point line. Mobley had one pull-up jumper that wasn't in the paint. Royal had another that was borderline. Otherwise, the Buckeyes were 17 for 20 on layups and took 10 of their other 12 two-point shots inside the key. Their two-point field-goal percentage of 81.2 was Ohio State's highest since they shot 83.9% against St. Francis (Pa.) on Nov. 28, 2009.
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"I thought at times we settled on the perimeter a little too much," Diebler said. "We wanted to play through the paint. When we got an advantage, they can bait you sometimes to living on the perimeter. We anticipated this not being one of our high-volume 3 games because of the way we felt like they were going to guard us."
Tilly led the Buckeyes with a career-high 28 points on 9-of-11 shooting and also grabbed nine rebounds. Thornton had 26 points on 7-of-10 shooting and had five rebounds, four assists and one turnover.
Ohio State's freshmen didn't do much
The Buckeyes will count on freshmen Amare Bynum and Mathieu Grujicic throughout the season, but neither provided much off the bench against the Jaguars. Bynum was one of the first substitutions of the game but finished with just 6 points, two rebounds and a turnover in 12:14. Grujicic did not record a statistic in 5:34 of playing time.
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Of Ohio State's 118 points and 41 rebounds, its six bench players combined for 20 points and eight rebounds.
"This does not define any of those guys, not only because it's the first college game, but because this was a unique first college game," Diebler said. "Those guys have shown some really good signs in practice. They're going to be really important for us."
There's plenty of room for the defense to grow
Although it's unlikely the Buckeyes will play another game this season with as many possessions, IU Indy's shooting percentage and ability to get open looks illustrated how much work the Ohio State defense still needs to get back to the NCAA Tournament . Ohio State also sent the Jaguars to the line for late 3-point closeouts on multiple occasions.
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"They have a lot of great shooters," Thornton said. "They have a great offensive scheme. A lot of backdoor cuts and a lot of shooters that shot over 45% last year. We've got to tighten things up."
IU Indy made 26 two-point shots, 10 of which came on dunks or layups. The other 16 were from further away, and Diebler said the Buckeyes schemed to keep the Jaguars from getting buckets off of their cutting actions, but ultimately made some mistakes in guarding ball screens that the visitors were able to exploit.
"We didn't really give up many layups off of cutting," he said. "They got a couple off drives. We had some poor closeouts in some long closeout situations, but they just kept moving back; they started moving behind some handoffs against some of our switching."
The Jaguars also had 12 offensive rebounds, helping give them a 16-11 advantage in second-chance points.
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"There were a couple of possessions we didn't finish through the shot clock," Diebler said. "We guarded great. We guarded multiple actions for 20, 25 seconds and then we'd have a bad closeout. We'd have a soft switch instead of an aggressive one after we'd just guarded for 25 seconds really, really hard."
This was the lowest-attended opener in Value City Arena history
Ohio State announced a crowd of 8,141 for this game, making it the least-attended season opener in the history of Value City Arena. The previous low was a crowd of 9,141 for a Nov. 7, 2022, home opener against Robert Morris. The Buckeyes won that game 91-53.
This is the third-smallest crowd for a regular-season game in arena history. The record of 7,929 was set in a Nov. 15, 2023, win against Merrimack. Ohio State won that game 76-52.
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Ohio State men's basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @ cdadamjardy.bsky.social or on Twitter at @ AdamJardy .
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State fends off dogged IU Indy in unique season opener: Takeaways
