Did Glen “Big Baby” Davis Cross the Line and Purposefully Try to Injure Shaq?
February 27, 2010While We’re Waiting…Phil Jackson on Z, Antawn’s Integration into the Offense, Combine Fallacies, Branyan Deal
February 28, 2010Ohio State finished off an impressive month of February with a home win over rival Michigan on Saturday afternoon. The Buckeyes are playing their best basketball of the season as the most important month in college basketball approaches. With a number of top 15 teams having lost already or squaring off against each other later today, the Buckeyes can continue a push for a 2 seed and potential placement at the Buffalo 1st-2nd Round site (the only site reasonably close to Cbus). With only one game remaining (home Tuesday vs. Illinois), the Buckeyes needed to take care of business against a below average Michigan team as they head into the Big Ten tournament as the potential favorite after this week’s season ending injury to Purdue’s Robbie Hummel.
The Buckeyes had solid contributions from William Buford and Dallas Lauderdale which supplemented the typically brilliant performance from probable national player of the year Evan Turner. Turner went for 18-11-7 on an incredibly efficient 8 for 11 from the field. Turner is so efficient that you think he could be having a ho-hum game and you look up and he is dominating the stat sheet (he also had 4 blocks). Make no mistake he was the best player on the floor throughout the game and he positively affects the the play from end-to-end on almost every possession. He struggled with turnovers again which has been a problem that has crept up all season. He controls the ball so much throughout the 40 minutes that it is tough for him not to have a fair amount of turnovers. Still, 8 TOs in one game is way too many.
Toledo Libbey product William Buford had a game-high 24 points. Buford is the second leading scorer on the season for OSU but anytime he can contribute 15 or more points, the Buckeyes are in good shape. Buford, who has struggled from beyond the arc all season at 35%, was hitting from three all afternoon which bumped up his scoring on the afternoon. Dallas Lauderdale tied his season high for scoring with 14 points.
The contributions from Buford and Lauderdale were required for the win with Jon Diebler and David Lighty struggling mightily from the field. Diebler, who has improved from 3 over the course of his OSU career and is shooting 42% this year, was an ugly 1 of 7 from three against UM. The Wolverines were pesky and continued to hang around. Diebler had a couple opportunities to bury a 3 that could have put the game out of reach but he was off all day. Lighty contributed only 7 points and was an ugly 3 of 8 from the free throw line. Although totally different players, Lighty is incredibly active akin to Andy Varejao. He is consistently crashing the glass and keeping balls alive. His activity also draws a ton of fouls but he has to be able to hit on his FTs if he is going to have that kind of success getting to the line. He cannot go 3 of 8 from the line if OSU is going to go deep in the tournament.
Michigan, who was ranked 15th in country in the preseason, has had a horrible year which is uncharacteristic for a Jon Beilein team. In my mind he is one of the better coaches in the country but he has not found the right formula for this edition. Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims have not been able to pull the Wolverines out of a mid-season slide. They were incredibly balanced today but no one stood out. They kept the game close but you never really felt they had the ability to take the lead and keep it. All five starters had 10 or 11 points but no more and they only got 2 points off the bench.
…which brings us to the one major problem with this OSU team right now. All 66 points were scored by the 5 starters. They had an amazing 0 points off the bench. Not a single bench player played more than 9 minutes and only 3 guys off the bench even saw the floor. It is pretty much a 6 man rotation with only Kyle Madsen subbing in for Lauderdale when he gets in foul trouble or gets winded. The starting 5 is good enough to win games and be a top 10 team in the country but the one criticism of Matta this year is how much he has played his starters and how short his rotation has been. Part of this is a lack of depth but again a lot of these Big Ten games should not be do-or-die every minute. Diebler and Buford played the full 40 and Turner played 39 minutes. It will be interesting to see how that holds up in the tournaments where, in order to be successful, you have to play games on either no days rest in the conference tournament or one day of rest in the NCAA tournament.
(Photo: Adam Widman/OSU Athletic Dept.)
7 Comments
Easy solution; play Mark Titus more. Wettest jump shot in the league.
testing 1 2 3
Did the student section chant “JUST LIKE FOOT-BALL” again? I love that!
Okay I give up on WFNY
@Cavs Dude- Why? It seems a little harsh to do so just because the Buckeyes beat Michigan. Maybe you’re just unfortunate enough to be a Michigan fan.
Nova/Cuse is going to lose, Kentucky and Kansas both lost. Maybe OSU will be moving up again. I expect Tenn to jump pretty far in the polls this week.
Turner’s block yesterday was filthy.