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Ohio State 47, Coppin State 39 (Final)

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My thoughts from the game last night, which I attended. I somewhat agree that OSU came out thinking that Coppin St. would just roll over. There did not seem to be much fire in OSU tonight. Then again, the crowd didn't help much, as it seemed that the crowd was waiting for the Buckeyes to do something great to get them into it. Unfortunately, that never really happened.

I still see the same negatives that have been there thus far in this young season, namely a total lack of rebounding (late in the game, the rebounding margin was 29 for CSU and 15 for OSU, and I need not go into detail about how bad your rebounding is if you get doubled up by a mid-major that isn't very strong this year), a tendency to turn the ball over, and what I think is a total lack of effort and/or strategy on the offensive side of the ball. This latter point I've been harping on for several games now. It seems that on offense, OSU has no plays called, but is rather content to let one man dribble the ball around the three point line or the players are content to swing the ball around the three point line; there appears to be very little driving the ball to the hoop (with the exception of Turner, who did this a few times last night) or off-the-ball screening and cutting. Those things lead to open shots, yet OSU does very, very little of it. It is frustrating to watch at times, especially when you know OSU has the athletes to do so. Lighty seemed to disappear again last night, and KK once again didn't really assert himself much. Those guys have so much ability, I am not sure what is going on.

The positives last night that stick out most in my mind were pretty nice games from Turner and Hill. Turner, with his slashing ability and outside shot working, had an especially good night. Hill plays solid defense and can handle the ball, but he still plays a bit reckless, and he needs to be more confident in his shot.

All in all, a win is a win, but it will be nice to see the team play with a little more emotion on Saturday.
 
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Coppin St. 69, (NR) St. Paul's VA 65
Coppin St. 72, (NR) Allen 61
(44) Kent St. 74, Coppin St. 51
(3) Xavier 98, Coppin St. 49
Coppin St. 102, (252) Southeast Missouri St. 99 (2OT)
(152) NC Wilmington 78, Coppin St. 57
(167) Hawaii 79, Coppin St. 58
(119) Morgan St. 78, Coppin St. 50
(59) Arizona St. 60, Coppin St. 43

Coppin State does not rank in the top 300 in the Pomeroy power rankings. Our young Buckeyes clearly need to work on fundamentals, especially rebounding. At this rate, this team will not win 14 games this year. The next two games will tell, but alarm bells better be going off somewhere right now.
 
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JCOSU86;1025121; said:
I still don't understand how beating a 3-8 mid-major team helps our RPI.
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It doesn't... if they continue their losing ways it actually hurts Ohio State's RPI.

RPI Formula= 1/4*(Win Percentage)+1/2*(Opponent's Win Percentage)+1/4*(Opponent's Opponent's Win Percentage)
 
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Steve19;1025093; said:
Coppin St. 69, (NR) St. Paul's VA 65
Coppin St. 72, (NR) Allen 61
(44) Kent St. 74, Coppin St. 51
(3) Xavier 98, Coppin St. 49
Coppin St. 102, (252) Southeast Missouri St. 99 (2OT)
(152) NC Wilmington 78, Coppin St. 57
(167) Hawaii 79, Coppin St. 58
(119) Morgan St. 78, Coppin St. 50
(59) Arizona St. 60, Coppin St. 43

Coppin State does not rank in the top 300 in the Pomeroy power rankings. Our young Buckeyes clearly need to work on fundamentals, especially rebounding. At this rate, this team will not win 14 games this year. The next two games will tell, but alarm bells better be going off somewhere right now.
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Pomeroy has Coppin State at 308. Ohio State's next opponent (Presbyterian) is even worse: 314.

FWIW, there are 341 total teams ranked.
 
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JCOSU86;1025121; said:
I still don't understand how beating a 3-8 mid-major team helps our RPI.
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I'm really not sure but I think if we had lost it certainly would have not helped our RPI.

Regarding the game, all I have to say is that after a week of practice I don't see a whole lot of improvement. Yup, KK is a typical Euro player who likes to play around the perimeter and does not like to mix it up. I agree with the post above that he plays like he is 6'5". I have no idea how it was the MVP in the 19-under European games.

What the hell has happened to Lighty? I don't see him doing much on offense at all and anyone can play in a zone defense. Well maybe I take that back, KK and Hunter looked like they were lost underneath.

Hill is not our answer. We need a PG who can score and let Butler play the 2. However, that player is not here this year.

Matta must be pulling his hair out. This team doesn't seem to be grasping the concepts that he coaches.
 
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LitlBuck;1025277; said:
What if we would have lost?
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Ohio State's win percentage would have taken a more drastic dip than the total of our opponent's win percentage, thus Ohio State would have lost ground on the RPI. A loss will almost always hurt the RPI, even if it is a very small amount.
 
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OHTG101121021_1024x768.jpg

[FONT=arial,helvetica] Ohio State's David Lighty (23) drives to the basket between Coppin State's Eddie Hayden (31) and Julian Conyers (32) during the first half of their college basketball game Monday, Dec 10, 2007, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Terry Gilliam)[/FONT]
 
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Morgan St. beat this team by 28! That brings to mind one simple question.... who in the hell is Morgan St??? Geesh. And someone said that this was a good win... :eek:

This was a miserable win. And Matta has his work cut out for him, or this will be his first EVER sub-20 win season. That simple.

On a positive note, I have these comments that we need to keep in mind:

1. The young players are talented. No question there.
2. The recruits are even talenteder. I know that's not a word, but I'm using it and if you don't like it, I've got a finger just for your eyes only.
3. Matta is 5 wins into this season. And all 3 loses are to ranked opponents.
4. We crushed a decent SU team.
5. The Bucks are back in the National Championship game (in football, of course)

Man, that #5 goes a long way, doesn't it??? :biggrin:
 
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Yertle;1025901; said:
Morgan St. beat this team by 28! That brings to mind one simple question.... who in the hell is Morgan St??? Geesh. And someone said that this was a good win... :eek:

This was a miserable win. And Matta has his work cut out for him, or this will be his first EVER sub-20 win season. That simple.

On a positive note, I have these comments that we need to keep in mind:

1. The young players are talented. No question there.
2. The recruits are even talenteder. I know that's not a word, but I'm using it and if you don't like it, I've got a finger just for your eyes only.
3. Matta is 5 wins into this season. And all 3 loses are to ranked opponents.
4. We crushed a decent SU team.
5. The Bucks are back in the National Championship game (in football, of course)

Man, that #5 goes a long way, doesn't it??? :biggrin:
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I said it was a good win and that's better than a good loss isn't it? It was a good win because the players needed it to regain some confidence, to have something to be happy about,. With a team this young every loss weighs more and more on their confidence, just as I'm sure Deibler's shooting weighs on him. So just to break that losing streak makes this a damned good win.
 
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The good news: we won. The bad news: everything else.

Butler- if he wasn't such a good three point shooter we might be 3-5 right now. But we need someone to be able to drive some. Everyone sees the same thing- all this offense does is swing the ball around the perimeter. I am sure that Thad has some offensive system implemented, I just want to know what it is so that if we ever successfully run it I can just die in peace right there. If we get penetration, then we can kick out to Butler for open 3s for him to drain, so I am ok with him playing out on top of the key all game on offense. But we aren't penetrating at all, and on the rare occasion we do, we NEVER kick back out. We dont play the inside-out game with Kosta/OH. The best looks Butler gets are transition 3s and when he drifts back behind NBA range to shoot. The amazing part about all this is, if we start hitting 3s on passes back outside, that will open up the inside some :yow1:. Butler's D is still excellent.

Lighty- he played? No but seriously, where is he on the offensive end? We were all expecting this great slashing SF who would be our 2nd leading scorer, and right now he is neither. His 3 point shot has improved, but since we aren't getting open looks on the perimeter because no one can take it to the hoop, then it doesn't really matter. He has taken it to the hoop at times, but hasn't finished when he has done so. All that said, I would love to keep him on the court for 40 minutes just because of his defense. When we are holding teams to under 40 points then we are obviously doing something right, and Lighty is a huge part of this.

KK- so he starts 3-3 from the field in the first 8 minutes and takes 1 more shot in the half, and only 4 more shots the entire game? I honestly can't tell if he is not getting positioning or if we are just not giving him the ball, but why in the world would we not force feed him on EVERY PLAY? I mean he only had a 4 inch height advantage over their tallest player. Which of course also explains the 0 rebounds. I mean really, 0 rebounds for the tallest player on court? I realize that we shot a lot of 3s which create long rebounds on the offensive end, but they missed 29 shots and he wasn't in good enough position to get a single one? That screams lack of effort to me, which is what I saw from most everyone when the shot went up.

OH- great on defense, ok? on the boards, and absent on offense. The oop was a thing of beauty, but we really didn't see much of a post game from OH at all. His shot isn't bad, we need to figure out a way to get him mid-range jumpers (maybe the high-low that JO has been preaching for like 3 weeks?).

Turner- he is the only person who can create for us on offense. Glad to see him come out and hit those 2 threes really early, I think it really helped his confidence for the rest of the game (and hopefully that will continue). He also finished on at least one of his drives, and got fouled on a couple more, which are both good things. I really wish he drove with his head up though, so he could see open perimeter shooters as he draws in the defense. Its like once he puts his head down and decides to drive, he is going to force up a shot no matter what, even if he is getting smothered. He could really be the catalyst to the drive-and-kick game that we need to develop, but first he has to realize that he can pass after he gets into the lane. His defense was also very good (3 steals), but on the down side he had 5 turnovers and is VERY prone to traveling. Hope we can get this worked out.

Diebler- I really thought that we were going to be up by 30 and this would be the game where Thad told him to just jack up 3s till he made a couple. But it didn't happen, so his slump continues. Still like his defense and still amazed with his basketball IQ (3 assists in 13 minutes), but right now I really don't know what we can do with him. I still love the thought of Diebler starting and Turner coming off the bench as a spark scorer ala Ginobli, but right now we are getting nothing out of Diebler on offense so I completely understand Matta's decision to start ET. Starting to think that shot might never fall.

Hill- played very well in the time he was in there, and he actually dribbled the ball past the 3 point line, which, not coincedentally, opened up some shots for Butler. And his defense wasn't bad. But I am not sold that he can play that much against teams with more talented guards. Jury's still out.

Twiggy- yeah nothing new here.

DL- 2 offensive boards (half of our teams total) in 3 minutes. Which leads me to believe that the biggest thing we are lacking in our rebounding quest is effort. Because DL finds a body and boxes him out every time the ball goes up. Which is why I am amazed he doesn't play more.

Some other random thoughts:

We only got to the free throw line 6 times the whole game. Thats unreal. True story- you will rarely get fouled taking a three pointer, but you will often get fouled if you drive right at somebody. Take that one to the bank.

16 assists on 47 points is a very good ratio. Which makes me wonder why we struggle so mightily to score.

We got 4 offensive boards the entire game, and DL got 2 of them in 3 minutes. So besides DL, the rest of the team got 2 offensive rebounds. And we got outrebounded by 10. And we had a size advantage at every position. And this happens every game. And why the heck hasn't Thad done anything about this yet?

I hope the crowd is really ready for Florida, because the way we have been playing it could get ugly.
 
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Reading through this thread there are some very good posts who make very good points on why this team is struggling. Everyone has an opinion on this team but it really comes down to they are not playing as a team. They lack experience which on top of their lack of intensity in certain stretches of games has led to not only long scoring droughts but also bad defense. Matta does not have enough confidence in the group to play aggresive man to man which has led to being out rebounded and out of position. They lack aggresiveness due to the fact they are thinking out on the court instead of just playing. How many times have you heard Coach Matta talk about flow and how we lacked the flow on offense, that goes back to just playing and not thinking before each shot or pass.....we are a second late and a step slow right now. We have no inside pressence and a lack of a consistent scorer beyond Butler. They have a long road ahead but I have no doubt this team will get it done but it may be ugly at times.
 
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