Buckeye Blogger NetworkBasketball season is officially over. Depending on your perspective on how you look at the season’s overall content, this year was either a huge overachieving success or a flaming disaster. It’s Wednesday night, let’s rumble!
Shocked
There really is no better word for the majority of Buckeye Nation’s overriding feeling on Saturday night after the final horn sounded. They were shocked, me included.
How could Wichita State seemingly blow the doors off of our beloved Buckeyes for the better part of 30 minutes and hang on to eliminate the West region’s number 2 seed? How could a Buckeye team that only two weeks ago in Chicago appeared to be finally hitting its stride look so terrible in a regional final with a trip to the Final Four on the line?
“Wichita beat Ohio State?!”
The Buckeyes have advanced to their fourth straight Sweet 16 and look to continue hitting their stride in the city of angels tomorrow night against Arizona. Spring football practice has reconvened. The Big Ten has 4 of the 16 teams still vying for the Final Four. It’s Wednesday, let’s rumble!
He’s Crafty
The range of emotions regarding feelings toward Buckeye point guard Aaron Craft hit the highest of highs and the lowest of lows during Sunday’s 3rd round matchup with Iowa State. The nations best defender was on his game, went through a folly of errors, missed the front ends of two one-and-one free throw attempts, then made the games two biggest defensive plays, drove in for a layup and finally proceeded to drop a bomb to seal the deal.
“Smooth Criminal” Craft gets the last word on Georges Niang
Eyes on the prize..
School: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Location: Urbana and Champaign, IL
Founded: 1867
Student Population: 40,616 total, 31,932 undergrad
School Type: Public – Land Grant
Stadium: Assembly Hall
Seating: 16,618
Opened: 1963
Head Coach: John Groce
Experience: 1st year at UI @ U-C
The pre-season #4 team in the country gets things started off with a scrimmage of sorts against the Cavaliers of Walsh University from North Canton, Ohio. Still competing in the NAIA in basketball, they will be making the switch to NCAA D2 for the 2013-14 season. Led by former player Jeff Young in his 10th season at head coach, they will provide us with an opportunity to see what bench players will give us this season. The Cavs and the Buckeyes have met six times with the first exhibition taking place in 2006-07.
NAIA National Champs in 2005
| School: | Walsh University |
| Location: | North Canton, Ohio |
| Founded: | Walsh University was first founded as LaMennais College in Alfred, Maine in 1951 |
| Student Population: | 2,500 |
| School Type: | Private – Roman Catholic Church |
| Division: | NAIA D1 – Moving to NCAA D2 by 2013-14 |
| Conference: | Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference |
| Stadium: | Alumni Arena |
| Seating: | 1,800 |
| Built: | 2009 |
| Head Coach: | Jeff Young – Walsh University |
| Experience & Accomplishments | 224-44 (9th yr.) For seven consecutive seasons, Jeff Young took the Cavs to the heights of the NAIA. Walsh made seven straight trips to the National Tournament, won a national title in 2005, and finished as runners-up in 2010. After a year of playing in limbo, Young is poised for his next challenge; elevating the Cavs to the elite of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and NCAA Division ll. Young enters the 2012 season with the highest winning percentage of all active coaches. |
| Program History | First yr. of basketball: 1962-63 Overall all-time record: 868-555 No. of yrs. in NAIA Tournament:13 Last Post Season Appearance/opponent: Cedarville 3/3/12 Result: won 78-77 OT/OIC Title Game |
It’s been a great season of football so far and not too surprisingly basketball has snuck up on us. We have done our best to try and get everybody’s input on the upcoming season from around the blogosphere including a nice two-parter with people from around the B1G that can be read here and here. We also spoke with fellow Buckeye Bloggers about the Buckeyes and that can be read here.
Don't think Coach Matta is laughing so much after Sullinger's departure, but he isn't crying about what he has either.
We finish up our pre-season of roundtable with an in-house brand. Look forward to starting the season off soon but let’s first get everyone’s opinions.
Who is the Key returner other than Craft or Thomas?
WVa. The bottom line for this team will be defense this season and the key returner to make that happen will be Shannon Scott. As much as he may contribute offensively is up to him, the defensive side of the ball comes easy for him and when Coach Matta decides to put the clamps down it will be Scott and Craft doing that. Scott showed some nice flashes of this and what he can bring offensively so when teams double down on Thomas, look out!
Eric. There are a number of names that could go here. There are two roles of need on this team: “Scoring” and “Paint play”. That means that for each there are a couple of answers.
Scoring: One of the three – LaQuinton Ross, Sam Thompson, Lenzelle Smith. All three will be looked for their scoring output this season. We don’t know whether it will be Ross or Thompson starting in place of William Buford at the three, but they will definitely sub in and out for each other. Lenzelle Smith will very likely maintain his role at the 2 spot in the backcourt. He’ll need to hit some critical buckets for us this season.
Paint play: Amir Williams and Evan Ravenel. Ravenel will bring much-needed experience to the center position, while Williams will bring some serious defensive ability and hopefully some offensive talent. It will be fascinating to see how these two play together.
Mali. I’m excited to see LaQuinton Ross… came in with a TON of upside, will Matta be able to develop it in ways that help the team long-term.
Joe L. Zelle’ – I look for Smith to pick up where he left off in the tourney last year playing good D rebounding from his guard spot knocking down the open 3′s and finding a way to get to the rack and score.
How much hurt will losing Sullinger and Buford cause the team? Read More
With basketball season rapidly approaching and a lot of information to digest from around the conference, I thought it was high time we here from bloggers representing them. We kick off a series in roundtables with our first five today and we are doing our very best to round up the rest of the B1G for you! We hope you enjoy the feature and give us plenty of feedback!
The B stands for Biggest and the Best Conference
We’re doing our best attempt at giving everyone a good picture of each team with a variety of questions. I want to take this opportunity to thank our first four panelist; Covering Purdue and a great video guy that you can catch here exclusively to tBBC at times, WCBI TV’s own Robby Donoho and his latest video ; covering Spartan Nation is one of the best in that state up north in Hondo Carpenter; taking care of the Hoosiers for us from Crimson Quarry is John M. featured blogger for them and very well respected in the state just west of us; getting us straight with Bucky Badger will be Andy from Mad Town Badgers a great blog for Wisconsin; and finally but certainly not least, my old writing partner here at tBBC and current Buckeye Empire member Joe Dexter.
Hondo S. Carpenter Sr.. Spartan Nation. Keith Appling (G) is a key player back for the Spartans. He is Tom Izzo’s “guy” on this team and with that comes a lot of minutes. Not a natural point, that is the only spot he could play at the next level and Izzo is committed to him playing there.
Adreian Payne (C) is a native of Ohio and if you are a Buckeye fan, you would think he is all world. Against the Buckeyes he lives up to the hype he had coming out of high school. Against every other team, he is a key role player.
Derrick Nix (C) is the best of the MSU big men. Not as athletic as Payne, he can bang with anyone and take the ball and the game to the rim.
Branden Dawson (F/G) is listed by MSU as a G, but he is a SF. He is the real deal. Arguably, Dawson is the best player on the team. He suffered a late season injury, but he will for sure be 100% by conference play. They say before that, but MSU in my opinion has a history of rushing players back too fast. He is too valuable with too much basketball ahead of him to rush it. He is a complete player. Read More
