2010-2011 Men's Basketball (Outright Big Ten & BTT Champs)

[Buckskin86]

Without Turner, OSU missing the point
Buckeyes have talent but need a ball-handler
Thursday, April 8, 2010
By Bill Rabinowitz
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

When Evan Turner sat in the living room of the apartment he shares with Jon Diebler and told him Tuesday night of his decision to turn pro, Diebler had conflicting thoughts.

The part of Diebler that is Turner's friend was thrilled that the consensus national player of the year's dream of playing in the NBA was in his grasp.

But the side of Diebler that wanted to remain Turner's Ohio State teammate for one last season couldn't help but indulge in a moment of self-interest.

"I told him, 'Obviously, I want you to come back. Absolutely. To be selfish, and I'm going to be selfish right now - I do want you to come back,'" Diebler said. "But he's living the dream right now. This is every basketball player's dream, and he's going to live it."

While Turner prepares for the NBA draft, his teammates begin the process of life without him. With Turner, the Buckeyes would have been prime contenders for the national title next season. Without him, well, what are the Buckeyes' expectations for themselves?

"The same," senior-to-be David Lighty said. "We never lower our standards here just because he's leaving."

Without Turner, OSU missing the point | BuckeyeXtra

 

[buckeyesin07]

and they've also shown not to care at all. there have been 10 rematches in the big 10-acc challenge. 5 of those rematches were set in spite of the first game being decided by at least 10 points (13, 10, 13, 22, and 35).

Too strong of a statement. Only 10 rematches in 11 years (99 games) of the Challenge indicates otherwise.

 

[CHU]

One thing that stood out to me during Evan Turner's press conference was Thad Matta's statement that when he arrived at Ohio State he thought the program could have a first-round pick every single year.

He's not wrong in that aspect (thus far).

 

[Bill Lucas]

If it were between Diebler and Lighty I think that Lighty has to get the nod. Both look almost nervous with the ball at times, but I think if Lighty put in the work he could do a decent job.

1. Lighty can get into the lane and to the rim while being able to take contact. I do worry that teams will foul him rather than let him score because he's not a very good FT shooter.
2. Lighty can draw defenders and is better at creating for teammates (although I don't think he's exceptional at finding open guys at the moment, he seems to play with a head of steam full speed ahead)
3. Diebler needs to be off the ball..as does Buford
4. More rebounding on the floor at all times because we'd probably play more of a 3 guard lineup with Sullinger and Dallas both on the floor at the same time.

One thing I really like is that we'll be well equipped to match up with teams with big lineups and teams with smaller, quicker lineups.

The quote about free throw shooting isn't as accurate as it was before February. In the last 14 games of the season Lighty was 43-61 from the line for a percentage of 70.5%. When you consider the fact that he was shooting in the low 50% range prior to those last 14 games it's pretty easy to see that he figured something out in his shot to make his free throws much more consistent. Lighty appears to be a hard working player and I expect his free throw shooting to improve even more going into next year.

 

[LitlBuck]

The quote about free throw shooting isn't as accurate as it was before February. In the last 14 games of the season Lighty was 43-61 from the line for a percentage of 70.5%. When you consider the fact that he was shooting in the low 50% range prior to those last 14 games it's pretty easy to see that he figured something out in his shot to make his free throws much more consistent. Lighty appears to be a hard working player and I expect his free throw shooting to improve even more going into next year.

But if you would average Dallas's free-throw percentage with David's then his statement becomes more accurate. Dallas really needs to improve his free-throw shooting if we are going to go with 2 bigs plus I am not sure about Dallas's endurance to play how much of the game. Just not certain. Thad certainly has a dilemma on his hands... I think.

 

[DaytonBuck]

True or False

This team going from good to great to something special will be defined by Aaron Crafts play at the point next year?

 

[Bill Lucas]

True or False

This team going from good to great to something special will be defined by someones play at the point next year?

FIFY.

 

[Bill Lucas]

As I may have been a bit smarmy in my last reply about point guards I'll put in my .02.

I think that Matta isn't going to wait to see if one of the freshmen can come in and take over the point guard responsibilities. I think he's going to challenge one of the current players (Buford or Lighty) to step up their game and do what Evan Turner did which is to learn the point position and to focus their offseason on ball-handling. I'm not saying that he's looking for Turner like stats (but wouldn't that be wonderful) but someone who can get the ball upcourt without turning it over and initiate the offense.

 

[OSU_Buckguy]

True or False

This team going from good to great to something special will be defined by Aaron Crafts play at the point next year?

false. the leap from good to great would likely be the result of a successful point guard-by-committee (lighty, diebler, and buford), which allows thomas to secure a lot of minutes as the power forward. i think a truly great team has offensive firepower at each of the five positions. we may not see that if craft plays the bulk of the point guard minutes. to be sure, however, craft and perhaps smith's performance at the top will be key. if they cannot find adequate minutes, the three returning guard-forwards will log too many minutes just like they did last season.

 

[LitlBuck]

True or False

This team going from good to great to something special will be defined by Aaron Crafts play at the point next year?

I think that he probably knows already that while Craft is a tough kid I just don't know if he is ready for the Big 10 but I don't think that Buford is going to play PG either. I really think that he might give Craft or Smith an opportunity early on during practice and then make a quick decision. If it is one of the guys coming back, there will most likely be Lighty and they might play it by committee like they did when Turner was out last year. Buford is more of a shooter than a distributor or driver and I don't think his game is suitable for the PG position. How we do next year will not only depend on the PG position but on how fast Thomas and Sullinger get acclimated to playing in college.

I think you can write off Kentucky for next year:)

 

[OSU_Buckguy]

Too strong of a statement. Only 10 rematches in 11 years (99 games) of the Challenge indicates otherwise.

half of the rematches were decided on the heel of a game decided by at least 10 points. apparently, the committee gives virtually no weight to how good the first game is.

 

[OSU_Buckguy]

stuff.

i see a lot words like "should" and "earned" in your post. as i've stated more than a couple times, msu has played unc 5 times in 5 years. each culminated with a tar heel victory, with some being horrible losses for the spartans. in spite of the one-sided affair, msu received their opportunities to face unc in the challenge. based on the rationale of your posts, the committee should have given other programs an opportunity to derail unc because, after all, msu failed repeatedly and failed badly.

the selection committee cares little about what "should" happen, whatever that means. they care about pitting teams that ended their seasons at relatively the same spot in their respective conference and, more importantly, pitting teams that will create maximum viewership. the point is that neither ohio state nor purdue owns the rights to a duke game. each has at least a couple good reasons to face duke. purdue's best reason to face duke is that each will likely be a preseason top 3/4/5 team, with ohio state likely being just inside or outside the top 10. do you really think that the committee will pass on pitting two, say, top 4 teams against each other in the challenge? heck, the committee may think that msu has a better reason to face duke than osu does. purdue and msu are both probably going to be preseason teams.

 

[buckeyesin07]

half of the rematches were decided on the heel of a game decided by at least 10 points. apparently, the committee gives virtually no weight to how good the first game is.

You're misunderstanding my point. I said nothing about whether the committee weighs the previous game into its decision of whether or not to schedule a rematch. You're arguing with yourself on that one apparently.

 

[DZ83CK]

as i've stated more than a couple times, msu has played unc 5 times in 5 years. each culminated with a tar heel victory, with some being horrible losses for the spartans. in spite of the one-sided affair, msu received their opportunities to face unc in the challenge. based on the rationale of your posts, the committee should have given other programs an opportunity to derail unc because, after all, msu failed repeatedly and failed badly.

the selection committee cares little about what "should" happen, whatever that means. they care about pitting teams that ended their seasons at relatively the same spot in their respective conference and, more importantly, pitting teams that will create maximum viewership. the point is that neither ohio state nor purdue owns the rights to a duke game. each has at least a couple good reasons to face duke. purdue's best reason to face duke is that each will likely be a preseason top 3/4/5 team, with ohio state likely being just inside or outside the top 10. do you really think that the committee will pass on pitting two, say, top 4 teams against each other in the challenge? heck, the committee may think that msu has a better reason to face duke than osu does. purdue and msu are both probably going to be preseason teams.

OSU-Duke should happen before Purdue-Duke and that's the bottom line IMO. I don't dispute that MSU-Duke may make more sense from the standpoint of what the teams did in the NCAA tourney and may be the more attractive matchup, but I also think it makes sense for OSU to play Duke instead, since Duke and MSU both played on the road last year and theoretically both teams should play at home this year. You won't hear me arguing that it is terrible if they go for the MSU-Duke matchup, but you will hear me complaining if they don't get OSU a better matchup than the likes of FSU, VT and Miami. OSU won the conference regular season and tourney this year, that usually gets you a marquee matchup based on past practices. Purdue has had the more high profile matchups than OSU the past couple years.

Forget about UNC-MSU - you are missing the key point that the only "rematch" that they had in the Challenge was after the teams played in the NC game, which as I said before they always do rematches of the NC game the following season. Again, this NC game matchup factor was not present for Purdue as they STILL have not made the F4 since like 1979.

There is just no overriding reason to pit Purdue against Duke again given that OSU is just as logical if not more logical. You can quibble about where OSU and PU should be ranked, but it is hardly definitive which team will be better at this point and I don't believe there is nearly as strong a correlation between the matchups where teams will be ranked as you seem to think (otherwise, why would they have had OSU play FSU and UW play Duke last year when everyone in the preseason thought OSU was better than UW?). At any rate, the rankings are in their infancy at this point and there's still a lot of potential roster change, so whoever's making the matchups won't really know for sure where the teams will be ranked. I doubt that, even in your scenario where Duke and PU are top-5 and OSU is not, come December 1st, people are going to look at the rankings and say "Duke is rated #2, Purdue is rated #4 and OSU is rated #8, it is a shame they matched up Duke and OSU instead of Duke and Purdue." You mention maximum viewership - do you really think more people will want to see Purdue @ Duke (given their recent history) instead of OSU-Duke? I don't.

Hopefully Dickie V's pick of OSU preseason #2 with Duke preseason #1 is a tip. I've noticed in the past he's used his preseason rankings as a means to promote an ESPN matchup (e.g., last year he ranked UK in the preseason when they had a bad team that didn't belong in top-25, and commented about their early season game with UNC through that ranking).

 

[OhioState001]

Aaron Craft sounds like he will be the next Kelsey Barlow for us. Doesn't score at all really, just out there to pass the ball and play defense