OHIO STATE 87 LOYOLA 75
Lewis leads Ohio State to win
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Daequan Cook of Ohio State drives past Blake Schilb of Loyola. Cook scored 18 points.
Ohio State guard Mike Conley Jr. brings the ball upcourt against pressure from Loyola?s J.R. Blount. Conley had eight points.
Eight scholarship players available for duty does not make for much depth. The Ohio State men?s basketball team made the most of what it had last night.
With first-year starters Mike Conley Jr., Othello Hunter and David Lighty on the bench because of or playing with foul trouble for most of the game, the Buckeyes rode senior Ron Lewis and freshman Daequan Cook and got contributions from everyone else in an 87-75 victory over Loyola (Ill.) in Value City Arena.
Lewis had his first doubledouble at Ohio State with 27 points and 11 rebounds, Cook had 18 points and nine rebounds, and the No. 7-ranked Buckeyes (2-0) advanced to the tournament championship game against Kent State (2-0) at 8 tonight.
Kent defeated IUPUI 81-74 in the other semifinal, setting up the first game in seven years between Ohio State and another Division I team from Ohio.
IUPUI and Loyola will play for third place at 5:30 p.m., Alabama A &M and Princeton for fifth place at 2 p.m. and South Dakota State and Virginia Military Institute for seventh place at noon.
The Buckeyes? three-man bench of Cook, Ivan Harris and Matt Terwilliger outscored Loyola?s 35-18. On Friday, the Buckeyes had a 47-20 bench advantage against VMI.
"Foul trouble got us a little bit. But I thought certain guys stepped up and made big plays," coach Thad Matta said.
"We?re a long way from where we need to be. The one thing I do like is that they are making winning plays, and every guy on this team in two games has stepped up and done something that we needed them to do. I love that."
The minutes had to be redistributed and rotations changed early after Hunter went to the bench with two fouls with 11:07 left in the first half and Conley, also with two fouls, followed him less than a minute later.
Regardless, Ohio State built a 20-11 lead to 44-29 at halftime with them out. Cook scored seven points the last 7 1 /2 minutes of the half and Terwilliger had four on two rebound dunks, the last a crowd-pleasing, one-handed catch-andslam of a Cook carom with 11.4 seconds left.
Terwilliger, more active the past two nights than he was in two exhibition games, helped Ohio State finish the half with a 24-11 rebound advantage, half of them on offense. The Buckeyes, who were outrebounded by 19 in their two exhibition games, won on the boards for the second night, this time by nine.
Lewis said he considered it his best game at Ohio State "because one thing I?m really proud of is I went to the boards. That was the main thing I was really focusing on. Scoring will come, but the main thing we?ve been looking for in our team has been rebounding."
Ohio State had a doublefigure lead for the last 30 minutes and led by as many as 20 points with five minutes left. A 12-2 run in less than three minutes reduced the Buckeyes? lead to 81-71 with 2:31 remaining, but Blake Schilb missed a shot that would have made it a seven-point game and Loyola got no closer.
Schilb led the Ramblers with 19 points.
"With a team like Ohio State, you can?t spot them 15 points (in the first half)," Schilb said. "It was hard to get back in the game."
Walk - ons added
Danny Peters and Mark Titus, who were serving as team managers, were added to the roster before the opener Friday against VMI.
Peters, a 6-foot-1 sophomore, is the son of Ohio State assistant coach Dan Peters. He played at New Albany High School.
Titus, a 6-4 guard, is from Brownsburg, Ind. He played on the same AAU team as Conley, Cook and Greg Oden.
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