Except when the game stood at 0-0 in the first 15 second, it was never close as Ohio State blew Presbyterian out of Value City Arena by a final score of 78-48. Ohio State ended the game with 4 players in double figures, including David Lighty’s game leading 20 points. They also shot a red hot 53.7% from the floor, and a somewhat cooler 42.9% from three.
The game started very sloppy. William Buford dropped a beautiful tomahawk jam after beating a defender on the floor. Presbyterian then went and began turning the ball over at a clip of about 1 per minute which gave the Buckeyes all kinds of leisure in scoring on them. Presbyterian’s sloppy play seemed to start to effect the Buckeyes a little bit who began to get a little sloppy themselves. Unfortunately for Presbyterian, it didn’t matter how sloppy the Buckeyes got with how many free opportunities they were given. By about the 14 minute mark of the first half the score was at 17-2, and Presbyterian needed the first five minutes to finally find the bottom of the net.
Part of the reason the game started this way was Presbyterian’s decision to (somewhat surprisingly) start 5 freshman. I imagine one of the games Coach Nibert is playing is to get as much quality experience for his players as possible before the conference season; especially with how poorly the season is going so far for his Blue Hose. It was also announced that Presbyterian is not allowed to play in their conference’s tournament for 2 years. It’s likely the game plan is to play to that season hoping to make an NCAA tournament with a team of very experienced Juniors.
At the 10 minute mark, Presbyterian started to get some things going on the offensive end. Guard Khalid Mutakabbir started hitting some shots and began to give the Blue Hose some confidence against the tough OSU man defense. Suddenly the flow of turnovers slowed, and Presbyterian began playing better defense in order to keep the deficit from growing any larger. The slop quickly disappeared, and both teams began to play serious basketball on both end of the court. Despite Presbyterian’s better play, they still couldn’t stem the tide of the OSU three-point shooting and still continued to lose ground.
PJ Hill continues to impress me with his defensive effort. After a poor ally-oop attempt between Simmons and Lauderdale, it seemed like Presbyterian was going to get a rare (for this game) OSU turnover. Instead, Hill knocked the ball out just after the rebound, drove the short distance to the basket and got the sweet layup and a foul. He plays great high energy basketball on defense and is a wonderful player to have on the floor for that reason. He needs to show this kind of effort every single game, though, and not just the games against the easier opponents.
After that great Hill play, OSU began to run away with the game again. Another steal by Lighty led to a fast break layup and foul that seemed to completely take the wind out of Presbyterian’s sails. The change in momentum allowed the Buckeyes to build a 32 point lead before the half. The Buckeyes did it both inside and outside with 19 points in the paint, and 9-18 shooting from 3 (including a full court lob by Jeremie Simmons in the last seconds of the half). At the half, the score stood at 53-21, and was entirely out of Presbyterians control.
one thing I want to point out about the great 3-point shooting in this game is that Jon Diebler wasn’t the player making it happen. Diebler hit 3-7 in the half – certainly nothing to scoff at, but not up to his usual shooting percentage of 51 – but 4 other Buckeyes drained 3 balls including Simmons (2-3), Buford (1-2), Lighty (1-3) and most importantly PJ Hill (2-2). Hill is inconsistent about when he decides to take shots on offense, but he he does shoot it he can be absolutely leathal. Getting Hill to start shooting on a more regular basis will be very important in those games when Diebler is not available
The second half did not change things much for Presbyterian. The Buckeyes continued to make things painful for them in all facets of the game with absolutely no letdown after the half. Every player wearing white on the court was giving it their all on both sides of the ball, especially on the glass. One big problem the Bucks have been having is that we having been going after the rebounds, likely because Turner was the player who was doing that. Now it’s clear the Buckeyes have gotten the message that Turner isn’t there to grab those and that they need to start picking up the slack there.
David Lighty has also picked up a more consistant aspect to his game that hopefully continues in future games. Lighty has begun to drive the lane and take shots close to the rim. It has added a dangerous scoring aspect to his game that will make up for another of Turner’s attributes that we will be missing come Big Ten season. Being able to drive the lane and, very importantly, draw fouls from opposing big men, is critical to getting easy points and opening up the outside jump shot. If Lighty starts to do this consistently, look for defenses to start to collapse on him, and for Lighty to begin dishing the ball out to Diebler, Simmons, Buford or Hill for the open outside look. Diebler has also started to try to score off the dribble drive a little bit too, which would be a big development to his game as well.
The big advantage to having Turner injured is that every other player has to step up their play to make up for his loss. While the team may not play nearly as well without him as they do with him, they will each eventually add tricks to their individual game that will make the Buckeyes substantially better by time Turner comes back. It’s also advantagious that we lost Turner this early in the season so that we had time to get this “new” Buckeye team to gel a little bit before having to play through the start of the Big Ten season. Without that time, the Big Ten eats this team alive without much time to reset themselves mentally.
As the second half stretched to a close, both teams began to experiment a little bit. During this time, the lead began to close a little bit from the 40 point spread to 32 with about 9 minutes to go. Much of this was caused by OSU’s inability to sink the three in the second half, going 0-3 through the first 15 minutes. Give Presbyterian credit for making the adjustment to start getting a hand in the face of the OSU shooters. They did not, however, figure out a good way to stop Ohio State from driving to the bucket and OSU continued to find some kind of offense down low.
It was nice to see Sarikopoulis and Kecman get some quality time in this game in the second half. It was also great to see Danny Peters and Mark Titus trying to make plays down low with the passing game. Madsen had some good minutes as well getting 4 rebounds and 6 points in his time on the court.
David Lighty ended the game with 7-12 from the field with 6 rebounds and 3 assists. Diebler shot 3-8 from three for his worst outing of the season but managed to get 12 points in the game. Buford and Lauderdale rounded out the double digit scoring with 11 and 10 respectively. They also combined for 14 rebounds and Buford picked up 5 assists. Jeremie Simmons continued to shoot well hitting 2-4 from 3 to net 8 points.
Ohio State next plays Delaware State on Saturday (December 19th) at 4:00pm in Value City Arena. That game will be played on ESPNU.
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