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Ohio State vs. Rutgers, Jan. 3, 7 PM EST, BTN
- By brodybuck21
- Buckeye Basketball
- 52 Replies
BASKETBALL PREVIEW: OHIO STATE OPENS FULL-TIME BIG TEN SLATE AGAINST STINGY RUTGERS DEFENSE
By Andy Anders on January 3, 2024 at 8:35 am @andyanders55
Vincent Carchietta – USA TODAY Sports
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It’s scarlet on scarlet to open full-time Big Ten play for Ohio State.
RUTGERS
SCARLET KNIGHTS
8 - 4
ROSTER | SCHEDULE
JAN. 3, 2024 - 7 PM ET
VALUE CITY ARENA
COLUMBUS, OH
BTNOSU -9.5
On Wednesday night, the Scarlet and Gray will meet the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, a program head coach Steve Pikiell has taken from a 30-year NCAA Tournament drought and brought to back-to-back tourneys in 2021 and 2022. Rutgers just missed the dance last year with a 19-15 record.
The Scarlet Knights are off to an 8-4 start to their 2023-24 campaign. A season-opening defeat at the hands of Princeton and a 19-point shellacking by Wake Forest serve as the biggest blemishes in their loss column, though they do hold a Power 5 win over Seton Hall.
"A really good, tough-minded Rutgers team," Chris Holtmann said. "They are a tough, tough-minded, physical, great length across the board. So it will be a great challenge."
NEED TO KNOW
STINGY, MULTIPLE DEFENSE
Rutgers is 15th nationally in points allowed per 100 possessions and it can roll through various schemes to slow opposing attacks down. Its interior defense is particularly effective as the Scarlet Knights collect 5.9 blocked shots per game, 11th-most in the country."They change defenses, so we're gonna see a combination of different defenses and they're really good at all of them," Holtmann said. "They press, which can take you out of things. Their press does a good job of being disruptive, yet at the same time shortening the shot clock, making it a situation where you're working with a limited shot clock."
OFF ON OFFENSE
That No. 15 defensive rating nationally contrasts with an offense that is rated 305th for the Scarlet Knights, scoring just 98.5 points per 100 possessions. The Buckeyes will be the far more prolific attack on the court, ranking 33rd at 116.1 points per 100 trips down the floor.Only two Rutgers players average at least nine points per game and none average 13 or more. The Scarlet Knights are 345th in two-point shooting percentage and 326th from three-point range, so if the Buckeyes can play with pace and build a lead, it’s going to be hard for their opponents to assemble a run.
THREE IMPORTANT BUCKEYES
JAMISON BATTLE
Strong shooting from the perimeter is a surefire way to break through a defense like Rutgers’, and Battle has been the Buckeyes’ best perimeter threat so far. Hitting at least five triples in back-to-back games entering Wednesday, Battle is shooting a team-high 42.5% from outside and making a team-high 2.8 threes per game.BRUCE THORNTON
Ohio State will need its star point guard and team galvanizer on point as conference play hits its full swing. He’s on a 10-game streak of scoring in double figures, though he barely cleared that mark in his last two contests, scoring 11 points against both New Orleans and West Virginia and shooting a combined 38.1% from the field, bringing his team-high season average down to 16.9 points per game.SCOTTY MIDDLETON
Circling back to shooting, the freshman Middleton is Ohio State’s top sharpshooter off the bench (40.7%) and another player who can create his own shot against a disciplined defense that might demand it.THREE NOTABLE SCARLET KNIGHTS
CLIFFORD OMORUYI
PROJECTED STARTING LINEUP| NO. | PLAYER | POSITION | HEIGHT | WEIGHT | 2023-24 STATS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Noah Fernandes | G | 5-11 | 180 | 8.3 PPG, 1.3 SPG |
| 0 | Derek Simpson | G | 6-3 | 165 | 8.9 PPG, 3.0 APG |
| 5 | Aundre Hyatt | F | 6-6 | 235 | 12.3 PPG, 5.5 RPG |
| 3 | Mawot Mag | F | 6-7 | 216 | 6.8 PPG, 4.0 RPG |
| 11 | Clifford Omoruyi | C | 6-11 | 240 | 11.4 PPG, 3.4 BPG |
AUNDRE HYATT
Hyatt is the Scarlet Knights’ top scorer (12.3 points per game) and most efficient 3-point threat (36.2% from distance). More than half of his scoring comes from behind the arc, as the 6-6 forward hits just 38.8% of his shots overall.NOAH FERNANDES
No less than nine players have started a game for Rutgers this year as it has rolled through various opening lineups to try and get the best matchups on the floor. Fernandes is the third of three players who have started every game, joining Hyatt and Omoruyi, and provides some playmaking in the backcourt with 2.4 assists per game. His 1.3 steals per contest also contribute to the Scarlet Knights’ defensive identity.HOW IT PLAYS OUT
LINE: OHIO STATE -9.5, O/U 133
It’s time for Ohio State to find its full form. The Buckeyes have the talent and depth to open January with a conference victory at home if their shotmakers can knock down a few tough ones.Prediction: Ohio State 65, Rutgers 58
Basketball Preview: Ohio State Opens Full-Time Big Ten Slate Against Stingy Rutgers Defense
Rutgers looks to slow Ohio State down with stingy defense, even if its offense is lackluster, as full-time Big Ten play opens.
LGHL Is Ohio State going to bring in a transfer quarterback? Looking at the most likely options
- News
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Is Ohio State going to bring in a transfer quarterback? Looking at the most likely options
Matt Tamanini via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
K-State’s Will Howard and Liberty’s Kaidon Salter seem like the last two possibilities for the Buckeyes to add a QB.
For me, and I assume for many of you as well, I had hoped that the Cotton Bowl would go a long way to determining what Ohio State’s starting quarterback situation in 2024 looked like. Whether that was cementing Devin Brown as QB1 or, after his injury, whether Lincoln Kienholz had grabbed the opportunity to play and refused to let it go. Obviously, neither of those happened, so instead we are back where we were a year ago with an uncertain future at the most important position on the team, just with slightly different pieces in play.
Last year, Kyle McCord was the veteran-most player in the mix with Brown and Kienholz — once he got to campus over the summer — also factoring in. Now, it’s McCord, Kienholz, and Air Noland, who will arrive in Columbus sometime in the next few days, if he isn’t there already.
But they aren’t the only guys who could be a part of the quarterback competition. At this point, we’ve all heard the rumblings about former Kansas State quarterback Will Howard potentially becoming a Buckeye at any time, and yesterday the imminent entrance into the transfer portal by current Liberty quarterback Kaidon Salter got many Buckeye fans excited about the possibility of him becoming a Buckeye as well. While it is believed that he will follow his former coach Hugh Freeze to Auburn, until that is confirmed, we’ll at least entertain the idea of him coming to Columbus.
Of course, given the seeming hesitance that Ryan Day and his staff have had to engage with the transfer portal so far this offseason, there is no guarantee that OSU will add another player to the quarterback competition, despite the apparent need.
Both Howard and Salter are multi-talented quarterbacks who bring more mobility — to varying degrees — to the position than we saw out of McCord this season. However, from a statistical standpoint, neither is a slam dunk major improvement over what the Buckeyes got out of the position in 2023. McCord had a better completion percentage and more yards than both Howard and Salter and had the same six interceptions that the latter did on 58 more passing attempts — Howard finished the season with 10 INTs on nine more passes than McCord.
However, Salter did rack up 25% more touchdown passes than McCord and Howard did, while also rushing for over 1,000 yards and an additional dozen scores — Howard had nine rushing TDs of his own.
Admittedly, Liberty did not play the same level of competition that either Ohio State or Kansas State did, so Salter’s numbers are colored by the Conference USA of it all, but they are no less impressive.
Salter’s Flames were blown out by Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl on Monday as he went 15-for-24 for 126 yards a TD and an INT, but as we (and Florida State fans) know from painful experience, non-playoff bowl games aren’t necessarily the best indication of a team’s capabilities.
Howard had already entered the transfer portal by the time the Wildcats played NC State in the buzziest bowl of the season, the Pop-Tart Bowl. However, I would like to think that if he had known that he would get to partake in the consumption of the recently cooked corpse of the bowl’s mascot after the game, he might have reconsidered the timing of his decision.
Check out highlights from Will Howard’s 2023 Season:
There are certainly pros and cons to bringing in either Howard or Salter. They both have starting experience, they both were all-conference selections (Howard second team in the Big 12, Salter first team in Conference USA), and they both have the added element of being able to pick up yards with their feet that benefited Justin Fields and C.J. Stroud (even if it was never a major part of the OSU offense; but if the Buckeyes don’t figure out how to improve the offensive line in a significant way, the QB run could be more important in 2024 than it has been since the Urban Meyer and J.T. Barrett days.
However, both Brown and Kienholz have enough athletic ability to run as well and have the advantage of having been in Day’s offense longer than any potential transfer. Also, both Howard and Salter would be downgrades from McCord in terms of accuracy, but not by a tremendous amount; and the increased level of offensive skill would presumably help both in that department.
I’m not sure if this sentiment is shared by the bulk of Buckeye Nation, but I am of the opinion that neither fans nor the coaching staff can use the Cotton Bowl as a barometer for either Brown or Kienholz’s future as a starting quarterback. The former seemed to be finally finding his footing before he injured his ankle — he had completed four straight passes and was starting to look somewhat comfortable in the offense. Once he exited the game, Day and the OSU offensive staff did little to give Kienholz an opportunity to succeed.
While he had only been with the team for six months, we saw a number of true freshmen lead their teams in bowl games, so I don’t believe that was the issue. However, it was clear that the Ohio State coaching staff did little to prepare the rookie for the possibility of having to play — either throughout the season or in this bowl game — which is kind of astounding, because he did actually play throughout the season and was the backup against Missouri. But, to me at least, it seemed like Day and company had very little faith in the level of preparedness from Kienholz, which seems like a coaching issue more than a player issue.
The uninformative Cotton Bowl notwithstanding, I think that it is imperative that the Buckeyes add another veteran quarterback into the mix for the fall. Howard has just a single year of eligibility remaining, while Salter has two, but given that he is coming off of a Conference USA Most Valuable Player award, I would imagine that his goal is to transfer to a school in 2024 that will help him make the jump to the NFL in 2025.
Check out highlights from Kaidon Salter’s 2023 Season:
So, that should not be a detriment to keeping either Kienholz or Noland in the room, but it might pose problems for a third-year Brown. While I am sure that Day would like to have four scholarship quarterbacks on the roster, now is not the time for the head coach to be worrying about the long-term implications of roster moves. While any transfer addition will have some level of domino effect across the program, Day has to go all out to win in 2024, or he might no longer be in Columbus to see how those moves play out beyond next season.
Does that mean that Day would be more inclined to roll the dice on the more athletically explosive Salter, even though he has never played at the Power 5 level; or would he be more comfortable with the more traditional Howard who has played against a more consistent level of competition? Your guess is as good as mine.
Since the transfer portal opened, there have been some around the Buckeye program and fandom that have accused the coaching staff of being asleep at the wheel. I have pushed back against that assessment because I was confident that there was more communication going on behind the scenes and I knew that the team was waiting to get word about the NFL futures of nearly a dozen starters. At this point, we still don’t know if Denzel Burke, Emeka Egbuka, TreVeyon Henderson, Lathan Ransom, Jack Sawyer, J.T. Tuimoloau, and Tyleik Williams will return for another season in the scarlet and gray, and from the outside, it feels like that lack of clarity has paralyzed the Buckeye staff.
However, now that no more current players can enter the portal until after spring practice, hopefully, we will start to see more movement from inside the Woody to sure up the roster for next season. Of course, there is no guarantee that either Howard or Salter would even want to be a Buckeye — though there has been far more smoke surrounding Howard than Salter, who has not yet even officially entered the portal. Ultimately, Ohio State has a number of glaring holes that it needs to address over the course of the offseason — and potentially more depending on NFL Draft decisions — and quarterback is towards the top of the list. Whether they do so via the transfer portal or guys already on the roster doesn’t really matter, but Ryan Day has to get it right, or the Buckeyes could be looking for far more than just a QB around this time next year.
Continue reading...
Matt Tamanini via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
K-State’s Will Howard and Liberty’s Kaidon Salter seem like the last two possibilities for the Buckeyes to add a QB.
For me, and I assume for many of you as well, I had hoped that the Cotton Bowl would go a long way to determining what Ohio State’s starting quarterback situation in 2024 looked like. Whether that was cementing Devin Brown as QB1 or, after his injury, whether Lincoln Kienholz had grabbed the opportunity to play and refused to let it go. Obviously, neither of those happened, so instead we are back where we were a year ago with an uncertain future at the most important position on the team, just with slightly different pieces in play.
Last year, Kyle McCord was the veteran-most player in the mix with Brown and Kienholz — once he got to campus over the summer — also factoring in. Now, it’s McCord, Kienholz, and Air Noland, who will arrive in Columbus sometime in the next few days, if he isn’t there already.
But they aren’t the only guys who could be a part of the quarterback competition. At this point, we’ve all heard the rumblings about former Kansas State quarterback Will Howard potentially becoming a Buckeye at any time, and yesterday the imminent entrance into the transfer portal by current Liberty quarterback Kaidon Salter got many Buckeye fans excited about the possibility of him becoming a Buckeye as well. While it is believed that he will follow his former coach Hugh Freeze to Auburn, until that is confirmed, we’ll at least entertain the idea of him coming to Columbus.
Of course, given the seeming hesitance that Ryan Day and his staff have had to engage with the transfer portal so far this offseason, there is no guarantee that OSU will add another player to the quarterback competition, despite the apparent need.
Both Howard and Salter are multi-talented quarterbacks who bring more mobility — to varying degrees — to the position than we saw out of McCord this season. However, from a statistical standpoint, neither is a slam dunk major improvement over what the Buckeyes got out of the position in 2023. McCord had a better completion percentage and more yards than both Howard and Salter and had the same six interceptions that the latter did on 58 more passing attempts — Howard finished the season with 10 INTs on nine more passes than McCord.
However, Salter did rack up 25% more touchdown passes than McCord and Howard did, while also rushing for over 1,000 yards and an additional dozen scores — Howard had nine rushing TDs of his own.
Admittedly, Liberty did not play the same level of competition that either Ohio State or Kansas State did, so Salter’s numbers are colored by the Conference USA of it all, but they are no less impressive.
Salter’s Flames were blown out by Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl on Monday as he went 15-for-24 for 126 yards a TD and an INT, but as we (and Florida State fans) know from painful experience, non-playoff bowl games aren’t necessarily the best indication of a team’s capabilities.
Howard had already entered the transfer portal by the time the Wildcats played NC State in the buzziest bowl of the season, the Pop-Tart Bowl. However, I would like to think that if he had known that he would get to partake in the consumption of the recently cooked corpse of the bowl’s mascot after the game, he might have reconsidered the timing of his decision.
Check out highlights from Will Howard’s 2023 Season:
There are certainly pros and cons to bringing in either Howard or Salter. They both have starting experience, they both were all-conference selections (Howard second team in the Big 12, Salter first team in Conference USA), and they both have the added element of being able to pick up yards with their feet that benefited Justin Fields and C.J. Stroud (even if it was never a major part of the OSU offense; but if the Buckeyes don’t figure out how to improve the offensive line in a significant way, the QB run could be more important in 2024 than it has been since the Urban Meyer and J.T. Barrett days.
However, both Brown and Kienholz have enough athletic ability to run as well and have the advantage of having been in Day’s offense longer than any potential transfer. Also, both Howard and Salter would be downgrades from McCord in terms of accuracy, but not by a tremendous amount; and the increased level of offensive skill would presumably help both in that department.
I’m not sure if this sentiment is shared by the bulk of Buckeye Nation, but I am of the opinion that neither fans nor the coaching staff can use the Cotton Bowl as a barometer for either Brown or Kienholz’s future as a starting quarterback. The former seemed to be finally finding his footing before he injured his ankle — he had completed four straight passes and was starting to look somewhat comfortable in the offense. Once he exited the game, Day and the OSU offensive staff did little to give Kienholz an opportunity to succeed.
While he had only been with the team for six months, we saw a number of true freshmen lead their teams in bowl games, so I don’t believe that was the issue. However, it was clear that the Ohio State coaching staff did little to prepare the rookie for the possibility of having to play — either throughout the season or in this bowl game — which is kind of astounding, because he did actually play throughout the season and was the backup against Missouri. But, to me at least, it seemed like Day and company had very little faith in the level of preparedness from Kienholz, which seems like a coaching issue more than a player issue.
The uninformative Cotton Bowl notwithstanding, I think that it is imperative that the Buckeyes add another veteran quarterback into the mix for the fall. Howard has just a single year of eligibility remaining, while Salter has two, but given that he is coming off of a Conference USA Most Valuable Player award, I would imagine that his goal is to transfer to a school in 2024 that will help him make the jump to the NFL in 2025.
Check out highlights from Kaidon Salter’s 2023 Season:
So, that should not be a detriment to keeping either Kienholz or Noland in the room, but it might pose problems for a third-year Brown. While I am sure that Day would like to have four scholarship quarterbacks on the roster, now is not the time for the head coach to be worrying about the long-term implications of roster moves. While any transfer addition will have some level of domino effect across the program, Day has to go all out to win in 2024, or he might no longer be in Columbus to see how those moves play out beyond next season.
Does that mean that Day would be more inclined to roll the dice on the more athletically explosive Salter, even though he has never played at the Power 5 level; or would he be more comfortable with the more traditional Howard who has played against a more consistent level of competition? Your guess is as good as mine.
Since the transfer portal opened, there have been some around the Buckeye program and fandom that have accused the coaching staff of being asleep at the wheel. I have pushed back against that assessment because I was confident that there was more communication going on behind the scenes and I knew that the team was waiting to get word about the NFL futures of nearly a dozen starters. At this point, we still don’t know if Denzel Burke, Emeka Egbuka, TreVeyon Henderson, Lathan Ransom, Jack Sawyer, J.T. Tuimoloau, and Tyleik Williams will return for another season in the scarlet and gray, and from the outside, it feels like that lack of clarity has paralyzed the Buckeye staff.
However, now that no more current players can enter the portal until after spring practice, hopefully, we will start to see more movement from inside the Woody to sure up the roster for next season. Of course, there is no guarantee that either Howard or Salter would even want to be a Buckeye — though there has been far more smoke surrounding Howard than Salter, who has not yet even officially entered the portal. Ultimately, Ohio State has a number of glaring holes that it needs to address over the course of the offseason — and potentially more depending on NFL Draft decisions — and quarterback is towards the top of the list. Whether they do so via the transfer portal or guys already on the roster doesn’t really matter, but Ryan Day has to get it right, or the Buckeyes could be looking for far more than just a QB around this time next year.
Continue reading...
LGHL Ohio State Men’s Basketball vs. Rutgers: Game Preview and Prediction
- News
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Ohio State Men’s Basketball vs. Rutgers: Game Preview and Prediction
justingolba via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports
The Buckeyes will look to get above .500 in conference play as the Scarlet Knights come to Columbus
With the calendar flipping to 2024, that means the Ohio State men’s basketball team has 18 conference games remaining on the regular season schedule. The Buckeyes (11-2, 1-1) will start the new year with a home game against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights (8-4, 0-1).
Rutgers has been slipping as of late, losing by double-digits to Mississippi State and beating a 2-13 team Stonehill 59-58, thanks to a Derek Simpson go-ahead jumper with 12 seconds left.
Ohio State has had an interesting start to the season, only losing to a solid Texas A&M team early in the season, but let an 18-point lead to Penn State slip on the road to fall to 1-1 in the conference after taking down Minnesota at home, 84-74.
The Buckeyes have only beaten Alabama, Santa Clara, UCLA, and West Virginia, and all of those teams have struggled early on this season. Ohio State seems like a tournament team, but they will need to get some quality wins in conference play to help their seeding.
That starts tonight.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25200306/usa_today_22195769.jpg "NCAA Basketball: Stonehill at Rutgers")
Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports
The Buckeyes are led by their sophomore backcourt duo, Bruce Thornton and Roddy Gayle. Gayle is coming off a sensational game in the Buckeyes’ overtime win against West Virginia, recording a career-high 32 points to go along with six rebounds and five assists.
Thornton is averaging 16.9 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game, as well 1.5 steals per contest. Gayle is averaging 15.2 points, 5.4 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game.
Senior forward sharpshooter Jamison Battle makes up the three-headed scoring trio for Ohio State, adding 14.3 points and 5.0 rebounds per game. Battle is shooting 42 percent from three-point range. The Buckeyes’ centers get involved as well, with sophomore Felix Okpara averaging 6.3 points and 6.4 boards while senior Zed Key averages 9.7 and 5.9.
Rutgers is led by Aundre Hyatt, who is one of two Rutgers players scoring in double-digits, averaging 12.3 points and 5.5 rebounds per game, while center Cliff Omoruyi is averaging 11.4 points and 9.1 rebounds in addition to his 3.4 blocks per game.
Rutgers’ struggles are on offense, ranking No. 240 on KenPom on offense while sitting at No. 16 on defense. They are shooting just 39 percent from the field, 29 percent from the three-point line, and 64 percent from the free-throw line.
The Scarlet Knights are averaging 67.5 points per game and allowing 61.4 points per game. By contrast, the Buckeyes are averaging 79.3 points per game and giving up 64.5 points per game.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25200307/usa_today_22156421.jpg "Syndication: The Columbus Dispatch")
Clare Grant/The Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK
This is a sneakily very important game for the Buckeyes. They are 11-2, but they have not beaten anyone of true substance except Alabama and possibly Santa Clara, depending on how their conference season goes. West Virginia will get better as the season goes along, but their year was doomed before it began.
Rutgers has not been good this season as it awaits the arrivals of Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey next season — two top-five recruits who are both committed in the 2024 class. They beat Stonehill — a team with two wins this season— by one point, and the Skyhawks were also missing two starters.
The Buckeyes have not looked overly impressive after the Penn State debacle, but the important part is that they are 3-0 since. It didn’t have to be pretty, but they had to beat UCLA and West Virginia. They did that, and now they need to beat Rutgers to move to 2-1 in Big Ten play.
Another reason this is an important game is the upcoming schedule for Ohio State. After Wednesday night’s contest, the Buckeyes are at Indiana, home against Wisconsin, and at Michigan. Those are likely three toss up games, so a win heading into that stretch would be key.
Rutgers is an elite defensive team, but the Buckeyes have the advantage of featuring multiple weapons on offense. This will be a tough watch offensively, but ultimately, I think the Buckeyes will be able to score enough to separate from the opposition, and the Scarlet Knights’ lack of offensive pop will be the difference maker.
ESPN BPI: Ohio State 80.9%
Time: 7:00 p.m. ET
TV: Big Ten Network
Continue reading...
justingolba via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports
The Buckeyes will look to get above .500 in conference play as the Scarlet Knights come to Columbus
With the calendar flipping to 2024, that means the Ohio State men’s basketball team has 18 conference games remaining on the regular season schedule. The Buckeyes (11-2, 1-1) will start the new year with a home game against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights (8-4, 0-1).
Rutgers has been slipping as of late, losing by double-digits to Mississippi State and beating a 2-13 team Stonehill 59-58, thanks to a Derek Simpson go-ahead jumper with 12 seconds left.
Ohio State has had an interesting start to the season, only losing to a solid Texas A&M team early in the season, but let an 18-point lead to Penn State slip on the road to fall to 1-1 in the conference after taking down Minnesota at home, 84-74.
The Buckeyes have only beaten Alabama, Santa Clara, UCLA, and West Virginia, and all of those teams have struggled early on this season. Ohio State seems like a tournament team, but they will need to get some quality wins in conference play to help their seeding.
That starts tonight.
Preview
The Buckeyes are led by their sophomore backcourt duo, Bruce Thornton and Roddy Gayle. Gayle is coming off a sensational game in the Buckeyes’ overtime win against West Virginia, recording a career-high 32 points to go along with six rebounds and five assists.
Thornton is averaging 16.9 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game, as well 1.5 steals per contest. Gayle is averaging 15.2 points, 5.4 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game.
Senior forward sharpshooter Jamison Battle makes up the three-headed scoring trio for Ohio State, adding 14.3 points and 5.0 rebounds per game. Battle is shooting 42 percent from three-point range. The Buckeyes’ centers get involved as well, with sophomore Felix Okpara averaging 6.3 points and 6.4 boards while senior Zed Key averages 9.7 and 5.9.
Rutgers is led by Aundre Hyatt, who is one of two Rutgers players scoring in double-digits, averaging 12.3 points and 5.5 rebounds per game, while center Cliff Omoruyi is averaging 11.4 points and 9.1 rebounds in addition to his 3.4 blocks per game.
Rutgers’ struggles are on offense, ranking No. 240 on KenPom on offense while sitting at No. 16 on defense. They are shooting just 39 percent from the field, 29 percent from the three-point line, and 64 percent from the free-throw line.
The Scarlet Knights are averaging 67.5 points per game and allowing 61.4 points per game. By contrast, the Buckeyes are averaging 79.3 points per game and giving up 64.5 points per game.
Prediction
This is a sneakily very important game for the Buckeyes. They are 11-2, but they have not beaten anyone of true substance except Alabama and possibly Santa Clara, depending on how their conference season goes. West Virginia will get better as the season goes along, but their year was doomed before it began.
Rutgers has not been good this season as it awaits the arrivals of Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey next season — two top-five recruits who are both committed in the 2024 class. They beat Stonehill — a team with two wins this season— by one point, and the Skyhawks were also missing two starters.
The Buckeyes have not looked overly impressive after the Penn State debacle, but the important part is that they are 3-0 since. It didn’t have to be pretty, but they had to beat UCLA and West Virginia. They did that, and now they need to beat Rutgers to move to 2-1 in Big Ten play.
Another reason this is an important game is the upcoming schedule for Ohio State. After Wednesday night’s contest, the Buckeyes are at Indiana, home against Wisconsin, and at Michigan. Those are likely three toss up games, so a win heading into that stretch would be key.
Rutgers is an elite defensive team, but the Buckeyes have the advantage of featuring multiple weapons on offense. This will be a tough watch offensively, but ultimately, I think the Buckeyes will be able to score enough to separate from the opposition, and the Scarlet Knights’ lack of offensive pop will be the difference maker.
ESPN BPI: Ohio State 80.9%
Time: 7:00 p.m. ET
TV: Big Ten Network
LGHL Score Prediction: Ohio State 74, Rutgers 65
Continue reading...
