Ball movement, fundamentals, shot selection, defense, hustle…
Everything that coaches push and stress were on display tonight for the Buckeyes as they dismantled a severely outmatched Alcorn State squad 100-60 reaching the century mark on a reverse layup from Big Z Sarikopoulos.
The most impressive stat line of the night was put up by Evan Turner who was all over the court with only the second triple double in Ohio State History. His line included 6-12 shooting for 14 points, 17 rebounds and 10 assists. Heck Evan Turner was 2 assists short of the triple double AT HALFTIME. This makes the first triple double since the Ohio State All-Time Scoring leader Dennis Hopson secured one against Ohio on 12/06/1986.
Jon Diebler led all scorers with 22 points on 7-10 shooting, 6-9 from the three. Buford wasn’t far behind on 8-14 shooting for 19 points, 3-7 from the three. Jeremey Simmons rained in 3-5 from three and 6-9 from the floor for 15 points on the game to round out the top three. Simmons has really found his game now that he’s playing his more natural shooting guard position and he’s becoming a powerful 6 man off the bench.
Just like in the game against Walsh, the Buckeyes were once again proficient with spreading the ball around. The stat of note was that they had 29 assists on 39 baskets, just more than three-quarters of the shots made were off a pass. This is a big credit to both the players and the coaches. During the game, it was clear that the players didn’t care who they were looking for they were simply passing it to the first open white jersey they could see. This trust and team play will be huge against teams that will provide more of a defensive effort against the Bucks.
This Buckeye’s team is clearly a fast-paced hustle team. I have not seen an OSU team hustle as much as this one does. Every player on the team goes after the ball, there’s NO standing around and waiting for things to happen. This is a very very well disciplined Basketball team. This has become clear in the rebounding numbers – 43 for the team with 12 off the offensive glass. Those numbers are substantially better than last year. It’s very nice to see Buckeyes flying around the court, moving the ball up the ball quickly, diving after the loose balls and getting back on defense in a hurry. One of the best examples of this came mid-way through the first half when Turner lobbed a pass for an ally-oop, but it was tipped and picked off. Alcorn State dished it down the court to a streaking man, but Turner outran the play and blocked the shot after the Alcorn State player hesitated to prevent Buford from defending the layup.
The defense is absolutely smothering holding Alcorn State to 35% shooting on the game. The Braves did shoot 43.8% from beyond the arc, but that was entirely on the legs of Jonathan Boyd’s 6-10 shooting from downtown. He is a force from the three, hitting at least 1 from NBA range with a hand in his face, and another from the three-quarters point on the floor that had no business being anywhere near the basket. The defense doesn’t let too many open shooters go, but Boyd simply abused us with sick shooting. Not a whole lot can be done about that. Outside of Boyd, the rest of the team went 1-6 from three and 14-47 on the floor (29.8%).
We covered the ball movement before but only touched on the shooting. This Buckeyes team is the deepest shooting team I can remember. The Bucks shot 39-73 (53.4%) with 14-33 (42.4%) from three, and that’s after some junk shooting at the end of the game to try to break the 100 point mark. The starters (Turner, Diebler, Lighty, Buford, Madsen) shot 28-48 (58.3%) and 9-20 (45%) from the three, and that’s with Turner and Lighty missing on their 4 attempts from 3. This team is incredibly deep shooting the ball. Of the 11 players who will reasonably take the court (sorry Peters and Titus) 8 are competent in shooting from long range. This includes the surprising addition of Nikola Kecman who hit 1-2, along with another shot where his foot was on the line.
I understand that Alcorn State is not exactly a team that we can really get a good feel for how good this team is, but at the moment there are very few negatives with how the Buckeyes are playing. They’re making good decisions on the court, moving the ball around, and playing great defense. Even better is that the shooters are good enough that questionable shot selection doesn’t seem to hurt us too badly, as Diebler hit several shots that I thought weren’t necessarily the best decision. It looks like this team will beat the better defenses in a multitude of ways.
I also wanted to talk about Bufords play a little. Turner’s Triple Double really steals the show today, but Buford clearly looks like he’s made strides in becoming a more complete basketball player. He was dominating on the court, including a layup where it seemed like he was facing the entire Alcorn State team. He makes plays on the court and makes the game look easy.
From what I’ve seen so far, this season is going to be extremely fun to watch even with how tough the Big Ten is going to be. This team seems like it is going to able to compete with the best in the country and it’s clearly due to the fact that they’ve had several years to work under Matta.
Ohio State next faces James Madison in Value City Arena on Thursday Night (November 12th). The game tips at 7:00 pm on the Big Ten Network.
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