h/t to Joe Dexter for the title..

 

School: University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Location: Lincoln, NE

Founded: 1859

Student Population: 19,345

School Type: Public – Land Grant

Stadium: Bob Devaney Sports Center

Seating: 13,595

Opened: 1976

Head Coach: Tim Miles

Experience: 1st year at Nebraska

This is the return match played exactly one month ago between these teams in Columbus. The Good Guys won fairly comfortably, 70-44. By ‘comfortably‘, this game was effectively over with 8:51 to play.

As always, statistics will be gleaned from Statsheet. Usual drill with the by now familiar metrics of the Four Factors; effective FG%, TO%, Off Rebounds Rate and FT Rate. There will be other metrics thrown in as well, just to flesh out the teams performances.

Nebraska (11-10, 2-6) continues their run of not-too-good play. In Tuesday’s game, they were hammered at The Barn by Minnesota, 64-85. To Nebraska’s credit, they did shoot very well (55%) from the field and 64% from 3-land. Not to worry, more to the point, the Huskers shot 34% against the Buckeyes. Starter Stats, below:

		GP	MPG	PPG	FG%	FT%	3P%	RPG	APG	TPG	FPG
#15	R. Gallegos	22	37.1	13.5	40.7	70.4	31.6	3.2	1.1	1.1	2.0
#24	D. Talley	22	35.4	13.0	35.1	66.3	32.3	5.4	2.5	2.1	2.0
#13	B. Ubel	20	32.2	12.1	48.6	81.1	23.5	6.7	1.4	1.9	3.4
#2	D. Rivers	22	22.6	5.6	44.2	47.4	29.4	3.1	0.5	0.5	1.7
#31	S. Shields	17	26.2	7.5	47.5	63.4	30.0	4.9	1.1	1.8	3.2

 

Coming off a solid home win against Wisconsin, the Buckeyes have a chance to put away a struggling Nebraska team, prior to going to Crisler next Tuesday. There were a couple shortcomings in Tuesday’s win, but all in all OSU showed better patience and focus on both ends of the floor against Wiscy. This may be Thad’s last chance to tinker with the line-up and substitutions before a brutal 10 game season ending stretch that begins the following Tuesday.

		GP	MPG	PPG	FG%	FT%	3P%	RPG	APG	TPG	FPG
#1	D. Thomas	20	33.9	20.3	47.4	80.8	41.3	6.3	1.6	1.4	1.6
#4	A. Craft	20	32.4	9.0	38.7	81.1	32.1	3.5	4.6	1.9	2.4
#32	L. Smith Jr.	20	28.0	10.0	43.9	66.7	40.3	5.7	1.7	1.4	1.9
#12	S. Thompson	20	24.2	7.2	48.2	71.1	31.3	3.4	1.1	1.1	1.4
#23	A. Williams	20	16.0	4.1	60.0	51.9	0.0	3.9	0.2	1.0	2.4



The below table has the comparative Four Factors as well as possessions per game (PPP), points per possession – offense (PPP-O) and points allowed per possession (PPP-D).



	eFG%	TO%	Off Reb	FT Rate	PPG	PPP (O)	PPP (D)
Nebraska	46.2%	17.7%	25.3%	29.5%	63	0.94	1.00
Ohio State	52.1%	17.1%	33.0%	34.4%	66	1.10	0.87

A quick glance at the above table would make you think that Ohio State has a quantitative edge over Nebraska. You would be right.

Other than ball handling being relatively even for both teams, there is nothing to suggest, if the teams play to form, much of a game on Saturday. But, you and I know differently..

So, what happens? I see the Buckeyes need to withstand an initial, maybe first 10 minutes, emotion-driven effort by Nebraska. OSU starts to gain control of game toward end of 1st half. The Huskers will come out with an attempted surge at start of 2nd half, close the gap a bit, then be turned away when Buckeyes put their foot down. OSU will pick up pace in 2nd half to get in a good mind-set prior to UM game.

Tip-off is on February 2nd at 7:00PM at Devaney. The game is televised on the BTN.

Go Bucks!