Buckeye Blogger NetworkWe’re one week away from National Letter Of Intent Day, and the excitement (and chaos) is building. We’ll talk a bit this week about the idea of “verbals” and visits, but let’s dig through the news bucket a bit first, shall we? Oh, and Mark Titus’ favorite band brings us our musical inspiration for the morning. Happy Wednesday.
Buckeye 411
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A couple of things before we get started. I want to give a h/t to Tim, as well as Joe and Eric, who put together the post-game recaps in such short order. Nice job, guys. Next, after the Iowa game, I am so glad that I don’t have BTN on our base cable package.
I want to address a couple areas that bothered me, and seemingly others, about the win against Iowa. These are turnovers and rebounding, specifically offensive rebounding. In this article, I’m going to define certain things the way I see them. If your definitions differ, your conclusions are likely to be just as valid. Stats used in this article are from the great website – Statsheet.com.
Regarding turnovers, I consider them a lost opportunity, an empty possession. With OSU’s points-per-possession (PPP) of 1.11, each empty possession is significant, particularly in conference games. OSU had three more turnovers than Iowa, so there’s potentially 3 points left on the floor. Ohio State’s turnovers per game have increased the past four times on the floor, so the trend is in the wrong direction. I’m sure Thad is addressing this, since it seems uncharacteristic for this team.
Now, on to rebounding; as Tim pointed out in the recap that rebounding in the Iowa game was unacceptable. Truer words have never been spoken.
To the victor go the spoils, and in this case, the winner of this mythical match up gets to face the Jerry Lucas led squad of 1960. When you look at the success of teams in Ohio State history we have covered every one of them in depth in this tournament. We have yet to have a game where the parallels were scary. For the Jim Jackson led 1992 team they played in one of the best all around era’s in college basketball history. For Mike Conley and Greg Oden, there was just one team that was clearly better in the Florida Gators.
The 1992 Buckeyes was very diverse and talented group that competed with every team in the nation. They had a transfer from Indiana in Lawrence Funderburke who contributed early and often and became an eventual starter that season. Jamaal Brown is still considered one of the best PG’s to play in Columbus and of course there’s Jim Jackson. I still believe if they hadn’t had the misfortune of facing TTUN for a third time that season they would have won it all.
The 2007 Buckeyes were instantly successful with incoming frosh Greg Oden, Michael Conley and Daequan Cook. The other two in that class were special as well and stuck around a little longer in Othello Hunter and David Lighty. Widely believed to be the best class to come in since Lucas, Havlicek and Nowell they took the fans on a great ride making it to the NCAA Championship.
What are to follow will be several comparisons of each team’s makeup. We will be including our opinions of each comparison with who has the advantage and at the end will be guest appearances. We hope you enjoy our tournament as we look forward to the outcome!
Ron Lewis owns one of the indelible images of the 2007 tournament run.
With New Orleans and the Buckeyes Final Four appearance rapidly approaching, I thought it would be a great time to re-visit Ohio State’s last Final Four appearance in 2007. The 2007 team was young but their 35-4 record, topped off with a National Title game appearance, showed that you don’t always have to have experience to compete for a national title.
Let’s start by evaluating the roster. Five new recruits joined the Bucks that year led by 7’0, 5-Star, power tower named Greg Oden. He was joined by his Lawrence North high school teammate Mike Conley Jr. Conley was also a 5-Star recruit. The top of the line recruits did not end there. The third addition to this 5-star triple threat was Dayton Dunbar’s Daequan Cook. This gave Thad Matta a great trio but he still added two 4-star recruits in David Lighty from Celeveland Villla-Angela St. Joseph High School and, Junior College Transfer, Othello Hunter from Winston Salem, North Carolina. These five would join juniors, Jamar Butler and Matt Terwilliger and seniors, Ivan Harris and Ron Lewis.
The combination of freshmen, juniors, and seniors would give this team the perfect mix of raw talent, athleticism, and leadership leading to a season opening ranking of #4 in the polls. The Buckeyes began the season by reeling off six straight wins to head into the Big Ten-ACC Challenge 6-0. By this time, Ohio State had shot its way to the #1 ranking and now had a date in Chapel Hill against the #6 ranked North Carolina Tar Heels.The marquis matchup was played in the historic Dean Smith Center in front of a crowd of 21,750. North Carolina featured its own standout in Ty Lawson. The game was close throughout but Lawson and the Tar Heels proved to be a little too much for the Bucks, winning 98-89.
After a wins against Valparaiso, Cleveland State, Cincinnati, and Iowa State, the Bucks took its talents to Gainesville, Florida. The trip to face the Gators was another early season test that Coach Matta knew would prepare his team for the upcoming Big Ten season. This also would be a pivotal game because it would lead to a rematch of these two teams in the 2007 title game. Billy Donovan’s Gators handled the young Buckeyes 86-60, giving them their second loss of the season and also proving that the senior leadership and young talent had a ways to go to mesh and become a championship level team.
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In the calm before the storm… it’s midweek mayhem.
Really? No... Really??
The rest of the week will be dedicated to hoops, particularly the matchup with folks from Cincy, but I thought I’d drop a little mascot knowledge on you. While that thing above may technically be a “bearcat”, I’m still convinced that the official team name should be “UChickFilAs.” According to some, it’s a version of a wolverine found in Asia, so strike two. And finally, the pajamas… with stripes… like the Bengals, but not like a bearcat. Ah well- if you want good UC coverage, you’ll need to go to the source.
The Scoops In Hoops
All of this pain, it multiples by 50 when you see a player like Robbie Hummel break down.
His career, his unbelievable and shining career at Purdue has come to an end. All of those clutch shots, all of those hustle plays, they’re all memories from now on.
But those memories have left a legacy on a program that needed something. Purdue Basketball NEEDED something to re-energize it.We were blessed to have #4 for FIVE years. We didn’t make it to any Final Fours, we didn’t win any National Championships…but we didn’t have to.
We won SO MUCH more than a trophy in the last five years at Purdue. We won excitement, memories, moments. Those stand the test of time, you can’t put that on a trophy.
The Buckeyes managed to beat the Cats with a timely shot from Sully in the paint.
After the Northwestern game concluded, there was one inescapable thought in my mind – this was a very good win for us. I saw it echoed among several other sportswriters on twitter, but ultimately saw a lot more negativity from the fans.
Why did we play so poorly against a team as bad as Northwestern?
Well, first off, Northwestern is not a bad team. As I pointed out in my preview of the game, this team often makes visiting opponents look, and play, stupid. It did not come as a surprise to me that they made us fight for every minute of the game clock. That’s what these guys do at home.
Northwestern, as you may have heard at some point, is also in the Big Ten. The Big Ten this year is one of the single toughest conferences out there. It shouldn’t surprise you, then, that we’re going to have a tough time on the road against a conference opponent. To be honest, we’ve been struggling on the road against opponents all season long – there’s no reason Northwestern was going to be any different, even if we did kill them in Columbus. Home court advantage is a significant factor in college basketball, after all.
Given some of the thoughts drifting around Buckeye Nation, here’s a list of some of the big things I took away from the Northwestern win. They’re not all positive, but they all generally show a positive trend in this team.
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Joe D and WVaBuckeye bring you another round of the tBBC All-Time Tourney! Today pits Evan Turner and the 2010 Buckeyes versus the Diaper Dandy 2007 squad featuring Greg Oden and Mike Conley. Enjoy!
As the seeding’s were finished and Joe and I prepared to do our match up research, this game became the most intriguing. Both teams feature National POY candidates in Greg Oden and Evan Turner and of course Evan walked away with every major award during his junior season in Columbus. Both teams feature a star from our previous match up in David Lighty who has the distinction of being on three of the nine teams we are featuring. The 2007 team came close to being only the second Buckeye team to bring home the big dance hardware since 1960. They had attempted to go through a Florida team that had their number during the regular season 86-60. The 2007 squad never lost at home going 27-0 and lost just three on the road to UNC, the Gators and Wisconsin. They finished the season ranked #1 in the AP poll and in the RPI. The 2010 team was led by quite possibly the best all around player to ever don the Scarlet and Gray. Evan Turner led this team to a second place Big Ten finish behind great single season stats that made the rest of the starting line up better. Almost averaging a double/double at 20.4 PPG and 9.2 RPG as well as 6 assists a game the rest of the starters averaged in double digits.
What are to follow will be several comparisons of each team’s makeup. We will be including our opinions of each comparison with who has the advantage and at the end will be guest appearances. We hope you enjoy our tournament as we look forward to the outcome!
I began a journey to do a comparison of the two greatest teams in Ohio State Basketball history. At first glance it seemed a simple task to pick two teams and write a nice article about who was better at a given skill. The more I read about teams in Buckeye lore, the more I realized I couldn’t write such an article. I had my teams picked out and as things would have it, Joe Dexter and I started brain storming. We came up with the idea of presenting tBBC readers with a challenge.
Is the Jerry Lucas Era the best in Ohio State History? It's time to find out your opinion!
Joe and I are going to break the teams down based on certain criteria: Playmaker, Post Presence, Ball handling, Head Coach and we’ll throw in some other advantages to go with those. We are also planning on having a guest writer or two as we move along through the tourney. We’ll provide you with some stats to chew on between the two teams in each match up.
We had six teams we were going to go with initially and each time we looked at it we knew we had to have eight. Then that turned into nine because we found one more team we felt deserved to be in the tourney. The criteria were simple. Which teams accomplished more for THE Ohio State University were our first choices and then teams that were led by All-time Greats.
