No. 1 Buckeyes go to 22-0 by beating Northwestern

With 12:04 to go, Northwestern's Alex Marcotullio whistled a pass past defender David Lighty's ear to Michael Thompson for a backdoor layup.

That seemingly innocuous play led to multiple repercussions for the Wildcats in their ill-fated bid to shock top-ranked Ohio State.

On the plus side for Northwestern, which tried to negotiate the upset without injured leading scorer John Shurna, the layup ignited a Thompson hot streak that helped the hosts rally from a 13-point deficit into a tie with 46 seconds left.

Alas, it also led to Lighty's steal on the game's pivotal possession that set up Jared Sullinger's winning free throw with 3.5 seconds to go.

When Drew Crawford's running 40-footer at the buzzer banged off the board left of the hoop, Ohio State remained the nation's only unbeaten team with a 58-57 Big Ten win Saturday at berserk Welsh-Ryan Arena.

“What an incredible basketball game,” Buckeyes coach Thad Matta said. “As I told (our players), we got what we came for.”

Northwestern, now 0-16 all time against top-ranked foes and 0-6 in the last 30 days against Top 25 teams, got everything except the much-needed victory.

“These losses are heart-wrenching,” Marcotullio said. “Hopefully it builds some character and we learn a lot of lessons from this game.”

One of Marcotullio's lessons? Fifth-year seniors like Lighty don't forget when they've been burned.

With the game tied and everyone in the joint standing and wondering how Thompson (16 points, 8 assists) might finish orchestrating the nation's biggest upset, Northwestern started to run its “chin set” with 46 seconds to go.

“Trying to get a good shot, use the clock up,” NU coach Bill Carmody said. “If you got something, good. If you didn't, get the ball back in Mike's hands because he was pretty effective at the end.”

But with 18 seconds to go, Marcotullio had the ball on the left wing — the same spot where he hit Thompson for the backdoor layup 12 minutes before.

Marcotullio thought he saw JerShon Cobb flashing past an unaware Lighty on the same back cut, but Lighty intercepted the pass.

“Lighty baited me a little bit on that last one,” Marcotullio said. “This time he looked like he didn't know, but he turned and stole it.”

That was one of the few slip-ups by Northwestern (13-8, 3-7) all afternoon.

ŸThe Wildcats planned to run down the 35-second shot clock as often as possible. Each team wound up with just 49 possessions, the second-slowest Division I game this season.

ŸAt the risk of allowing Sullinger to run wild in the post, the Wildcats limited their double teams in order to stay on the Buckeyes' outside shooters.

That worked perfectly as Sullinger managed a game-high 21 points, but OSU (22-0, 9-0) made a season-low two 3-pointers on 8 attempts.

ŸThe smaller Wildcats somehow outrebounded Ohio State 31-20. They snagged 14 offensive boards, many of them missed 3s that came off long, to earn 18 second-chance points.

Now, if only the game's biggest possession had gone the Wildcats' way …

Carmody, asked 15 minutes after the game about the play of Shurna stand-in Mike Capocci (11 points), couldn't hide what occupied his mind.

“I'm still on that last play,” Carmody said. “I just wanted to get a shot. We didn't get a shot. And so that's (really) disappointing.”