Men's Basketball
Buckeyes Fall Hard to Mountaineers
By John PorentasOSU Head Coach Thad Matta made his team practice on Christmas Eve and on Christmas day. It didn't seem to work, because against West Virginia (10-2) Ohio State (9-1) at times looked like it was clueless.
The Buckeyes shot just 35.5 percent from the field including a woeful 11.1 percent (2-18) from three point range and embarrassing 52.6 percent shooting from the free throw line, but the underlying reasons for the bad shooting went a lot deeper than bad eye-hand coordination. The Buckeyes at times totally abandoned their team concept and spent a lot of the game going one on one or jacking up threes from the perimeter. OSU totaled just two assists in the first 48:57 of the game. Evan Turner added a third with 1:03 remaining to raise the total to three. The Buckeyes got just one assist from a guard, that one coming from Anthony Crater.
The shambles that was the Buckeye offense was mirrored by what up until now has been a strength, their 3-2 matchup zone defense. The Mountaineers shredded it, scoring 44 of their 76 points in the paint as OSU was unable to stop them inside, particularly in the second half when West Virginia scored 28 of their 41 in close.
The Buckeyes led in the very early going, but that was more a result of a case of the jitters by the Mountaineers than anything OSU was doing. Once they got settled down they were able to put together a 11-0 run that erased an early 8-3 OSU lead and turned into a 14-8 lead for the Mountaineers.
"We were really tentative," said West Virginia Head Coach Bob Huggins.
"I didn't think our ball pressure was very good. We did force them out the way we need to force people out to be good defensively and we were were just tentative on offense and we held the ball too much," Huggins said.
Huggins got that message across to his team in a time out, and form then on the Mountaineers were in charge. OSU was able to stay close for most the remainder of the period, but West Virginia established its biggest lead of the half at 35-28 as the first period came to a close. The Mountaineers simply owned the second half, outscoring OSU 41-20 on the strength of their scoring down low as well as fast break opportunities.
"We spread them a little bit better in the second half," said Huggins.
Huggins said he hoped to frustrate the Buckeye zone defense by spreading the floor with five players on the perimeter to get OSU's big players out from under the basket. When that happened, his smaller team was able to rebound effectively by taking advantage of their quickness. The strategy worked to a tee as the mountaineers got put back opportunities with OSU centers Dallas Lauderdale and B. J. Mullens had to help on the perimeter and abdicated the paint. That also made room for slashing drives.
"We felt that the less structure we played with on offense the better off we would be against their zone," said Huggins.
"When they keep the bigs close to the basket it's hard to get anything close. We couldn't score if we didn't (get OSU's bigs away from the basket). We play a lot of matchup and I know that the people who are hardest to guard are the people with a lot of movement and the people without much structure because you never know where they are going to come at you. It's easier to guard sets that are predictable," Huggins said.
"We weren't very good today. West Virginia had a lot to do with it," said OSU Head Coach Thad Matta.
"It was one of those games where we started pressing and couldn't get into a flow of what we were trying to do. When things started going bad, especially offensively, it really compounded, got worse. It was very reminiscent of the Texas A&M game last year."
"We got beat today, that's the reality of it. We've got three days to get ready for Iowa. We've got to get a heck of a lot better. We never took a stand out there. We never stood up and said we're gong to do this or do that. At some point in every game you need to take a stand and say we're going to take this away or take that away. They had their way with us.
"I was more upset with the defense than I was the offense at half time. We didn't have it today."
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