Pregame Glance: Walsh

Ohio State starts this year with a single exhibition game against the Walsh Cavaliers in Value City Arena tomorrow night (Wednesday, 4th of November). Here are the facts to know:

Ohio State last faced Walsh last year in an Exhibition matchup and defeated them 90-63 in Columbus. Walsh went on after that drubbing to post a fantastic record and reached the NAIA “Sweet 16”. In fact, Coach Jeff Young has had spectacular success at Walsh, winning an NAIA national championship in his first year, reaching the “Elite 8” his second and the “Sweet 16” each of the last 2 years. He will likely see similar success this, his fifth, year.

Walsh is lead by a bevy of talented shooters. Junior Starting Guard Jeremey Shardo (6-0, 185) shot 46.7% from the floor and a smoking 45.1% from three point range last year in 31 games. Also hot is Senior Guard Brandon Speck (6-0, 175) who shot 45.2% and 46.2% respectively. Another player to watch out for is Guard Lamar Skeeter, who shot a torrid 56.3% from three last year, though he only played 8 games and attempted 16 threes. As a team, Walsh drained 50.5% from the floor and 43.7% from three.

Starting Center Kyelce Cescato (6-10, 245) can be a force down low, averaging 8.5 rebounds a game along with wracking up 20 blocks during the course of last season. Also worthy of mention is Sophomore Guard/Forward L.J. Sutton who came on strong towards the end of last season and began to make a mark on this team.

Typically in games like this, where one team is vastly overmatched talent-wise, the weaker team will take advantage of the three point stripe. Often, if they can get hot at the three, limit their turnovers and get a couple stops on defense they can keep the game competitive. Walsh, however, will not be likely to employ such a strategy to start the game. While they like to spread the ball around and aren’t afraid to launch a three, they prefer to look for the high percentage shot. Expect Walsh to speed the game up as much as possible, run the floor and get transition buckets.

Walsh won’t have much success regardless of strategy. Ohio State will look to employ a mostly man defense now that they’ve had some time to perfect it a bit. Walsh is a dangerous enough team to score points when the Buckeyes make a mistake, but when the defense is solid it will be a tough nut to crack. Walsh is at a mismatch at almost every position, except at Center, where starting OSU center Kyle Madsen has a 1-inch disadvantage. Madsen will be starting in place of Zisis Sarikopoulos who banged up his knee in practice, but may still see the floor in limited action. Big Z (as teammates call him) was already playing in place of Dallas Lauderdale who had broken his hand in practice, but who is expected to return soon.

Unfortunately for Walsh, the talent and depth of the OSU bench will have them gassed by the end of the first half if they push the tempo too much. While an up-tempo game is Matta’s preference, the game will really take an ugly turn when the Walsh defense begins to breakdown due to exhaustion, and the guards start to get sloppy with the ball. A particular target for that will be point guard Jeremy Shardo, who turns it over almost 3 times per game on average. Look for Evan Turner to try to take advantage of that.

While the team has some lofty expectations, don’t expect to see too much in this one as Matta will likely play the backups as much as possible to get them some extra playing experience against a well coached team before moving on to the actual season.

This is our first chance to see the Buckeyes in action this season, as it will be shown on www.bigtennetwork.com for a fee of $2.99. Seems a little steep, but with this being the only exhibition game of the season, it might be worth it. The game starts at 8:00pm (though bigtennetwork.com claims the game is at 7:00).