#5/5 Buckeyes vs. #4/7 Rutgers

[MolGenBuckeye]

Yep, she took over down there.

The only negative I saw was that our guards seemed unable to create off the dribble. Their man-to-man (woman-to-woman?) defense took our outside shooters out of their game. However, that's probably the toughest defense we'll face all year, so it doesn't worry me too much.

 

[OSUMBuckeye]

Great game. I loved seeing a large crowd there for a Woman's game. That's the first time I've seen them sit fans in the upper deck for a womens game. I haven't really been to many big Mens games, but I have been to several and this was easily the best atmosphere I have seen for any basketball game at the Schott. The fans were great in this game. particularly in the second half once the bucks got back in the game after that long scoring lull at the end of the first and beginning of the second. An announced crowd of 8,145. With as good a team as Foster is putting together, we should make this the norm rather than the exception. The crowd was much louder than mens games with 50% larger crowds.

A couple quotes:
"the Knights most hostile road atmosphere of the season." -Steve Politi, Newark Star-Ledger found here

OSU sophomore center Jessica Davenport was as big a headache for Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer. Davenport scored 22 by going up and over the Scarlet Knights defenders. Stringer said that crowd noise affected her team’s communication in the second half.

"They kept having to repeat their calls," Hoskins said. "They were trying to communicate but some players on the court couldn’t hear them. When we were on defense, they were just cheering us." -From Dispatch article written by Jim Massie

Nice to see the Schott can have a pretty good atmosphere once in a while. Of course it still would have probably been even crazier in SJA.

 

[Steve19]

Really good to get these insights.

I think the big thing is that they came back like that against a team that had beat so many ranked teams. Of course, Rutgers had a really loaded two weeks and we caught them at the end of it and at home in the Schott, but that doesn't matter. This team has what it takes and I really do think they can go final four.