Jamar is really coming on and he is going to be a key to tOSU's future.Butler eases into starting, scoring roles at OSU
By JIM NAVEAU
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COLUMBUS — It always came back to the same question.
Whenever Jamar Butler talked to someone from back home, he knew he was eventually going to get the question.
Something along the lines of, “Hey, Jamar, when are you going to start shooting the ball more?”
The answer apparently is, “Now.”
Butler, last year’s Mr. Basketball from Shawnee High School, has averaged 10.5 points and eight shots in his last two games as Ohio State’s starting point guard. He has also hit a pair of 3-pointers in each of those games against Minnesota and Indiana.
That’s more 3-pointers and six shots a game more than he had in the Buckeyes’ first 11 Big Ten games.
College basketball has been quite a change for the 6-foot-2 guard, who scored 2,412 points in his career at Shawnee and averaged around 30 points a game each of his last three seasons in high school.
“I get that question a lot,” Butler said, with a smile, about the scarcity of shots coming from him early in his college career.
“I was just playing my role. Coach (Thad Matta) told me he wanted the ball inside and whatever is going to keep me on the floor, that’s what I’m going to do.
“I think it was pretty hard for me because I was coming from a high school where I shot the ball about every time I had it. Here, with all this great talent, I just run my team and get the ball where coach wants it,” he said.
Butler replaced senior Brandon Fuss-Cheatham as OSU’s starting point guard seven games ago. For the season, he is averaging 3.7 points a game, but as a starter he is scoring 6.3 points a game.
Before being inserted into the lineup, he had attempted only four field goals in six Big Ten games and hadn’t hit any of them. In the last two games, he has scored 13 points in a win over Indiana and eight in a loss at Minnesota.
“I was a little hesitant to shoot the ball at first,” Butler said. “But I hit a few shots here and there and that got my confidence going.”
He also spent a lot of time in practice trying to improve his footwork and get himself squared up to the basket on his 3-pointers, where he has struggled (11 of 49).
Ohio State coach Thad Matta said, “I’m very proud of the way he has continued to develop. He went through a little bit of a downslide starting the Big Ten, which is understandable because the first four games we played were tough games.
“In December, I said I just wanted him to come in and play defense and pressure the ball. Now he has expanded,” Matta said.
Ohio State (18-9, 7-6 Big Ten) has won five of seven games since Butler and junior Je’Kel Foster replaced seniors Tony Stockman and Fuss-Cheatham in the starting lineup.
Junior guard J.J. Sullinger remembers the nervousness a freshman faces in his first college season. He said he ran onto the floor wearing his warm-up shirt the first time he was sent into a game at Arkansas.
“He (Butler) is starting to knock down his shots a little more and that just comes with the transition from high school to college. In high school, you can take good shots because you can clear the distance between you and the defender. It’s not that easy in college. I think he’s just starting to become comfortable with that,” Sullinger said.
“Jamar is a confident player. He’s never really going to show you he’s not confident. He kind of keeps the same face whether he hits the game-winning shot or has the game-losing turnover. You really can’t tell what he’s thinking,” he said.
Ohio State’s next game will be Sunday at home against Wisconsin.
jK
Why don't you let em know who broke the news to ya.
True!
