Men's Basketball
Turner-less Buckeyes Fall 74-66 to Butler in a Game of Runs
By Brandon CastelINDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Evan Turner didn’t make the trip to Indiana with his Ohio State teammates Saturday.
As expected, his absence on the court proved to be the difference for Thad Matta and his 15 th-ranked Buckeyes (7-2) as they fell to 20 th-ranked Butler 74-66 in front of a fervently energized Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
“I thought we played OK,” said the OSU Head Coach who saw the arena he used to call home turn hostile before his very eyes.
“When you lose a guy like that, it’s hard to explain. Evan and I’s relationship on the court was one where he would look at me and without having to say a word he would know what to tell the other guys.
The Buckeyes were unable to overcome the loss of Evan Turner despite the best effort of David Lighty
Photo by Jim Davidson“He always has a great feel for what’s going on.”
Despite David Lighty’s best efforts to replace Turner’s ability to get to the basket in the first half (12 of his 16 points), the Buckeyes simply did not have the closer they needed down the stretch to hold on to their 37-36 halftime lead as the Bulldogs (7-3) used a 19-2 run to go up by 17 points in the second half before holding on for the eight-point victory.
“Any time you go on the road, especially in a place like this, you’ve got to be six points better (than your opponent),” said Matta, who certainly didn’t get any help from the officiating crew down the stretch despite his tireless objections to the direction of their whistle.
“I told (our guys) today we’ve got to be 12 points better.”
With their best all-around player (Turner) sidelined for eight weeks with a back injury, the Buckeyes were nearly forced play without William Buford as well. The sophomore shooting guard went down with what turned out to be a far-less serious back injury during a ball-handling drill in practice Thursday.
“Coach, Evan and Will, it’s all right there,” said Matta, who has dealt with chronic back issues from playing days.
“We didn’t know if Buford was going to play. He told me Thursday, ‘Don’t worry I’ll be ready to go, but I can’t breathe right now.’
“We found out before tip he was going to play, and thank God,” Matta said.
It was Buford’s play in the second half (14 of his team-high 20 points) that allowed the Buckeyes to cut the deficit to three points in the final minute after Butler had used a 19-2 run to take a 67-50 lead with 5:30 to play in the game.
“Obviously we needed that cushion, didn’t we,” Butler Head Coach Brad Stevens asked rhetorically after the game.
“I thought we played really good for about 30 or 32 minutes, but they’re going to go on runs. They’ve got good players and they’re well coached.”
In fact, the entire game was about runs on both sides.
Playing without Turner for the first time since his nasty spill against Eastern Michigan last Saturday, the Buckeyes found themselves in an early 11-point hole after sophomore gunner Gordon Hayward knocked down a three at the 11:40 mark of the first half to give Butler a 21-10 lead.
“I thought we got great looks all night,” said Stevens, who watched his team take a number of wide open looks during a 13-4 run that lasted just under three minutes.
“I was really pleased with the way we attacked their zone in the first 10 minutes. We’ve had problems with that zone the last couple years but I thought we did a good job attacking it in the first half.”
The Bulldogs were still up by 10 points with 6:45 to play in the first half before the Buckeyes went on an 11-0 run to take a 29-28 lead with 3:30 to play. The run was capped off by a layup by Dallas Lauderdale on a great dish from Lighty, who seemed to pick up his aggressiveness with Turner out.
“David Lighty played his ass off today. He was everywhere out there. He literally played nine different positions,” Matta said.
No player was more impacted by the absence of Turner – Ohio State’s leading scorer but also best playmaker – than Jon Diebler. The sharp-shooting junior came into the game shooting 54 percent from behind the arc, but he could not find the same type of type of open looks against Butler without Turner’s ability to drive and kick.
“They just locked on Jon today. They did the exact same thing last year. That was his (Ronald Nored) one job, not to let Jon catch the ball,” Matta said.
With Nored hounding him all afternoon, Diebler did not hit his first shot until the final two minutes of the game. But when he finally did, he made it count, first by knocking down a three over the head of Nored (and from about three feet behind the arc) to make it a seven-point game with 1:38 to play.
He followed that up two positions later by slashing to the hoop for a layup that made it a three-point game at 69-66 with 52 seconds to play. But senior Willie Veasley knocked down both of his free throws and the Buckeyes never scored another point.
Maybe the biggest area where Turner was missed in the loss, however, was on the glass. Without their top rebounder, the Buckeyes were pounded on the glass 40-27, including 15-5 on the offensive end.
“I told (our guys) before the game, if we win the rebounding battle, I thought we’d win the game,” Stevens said.
The Buckeyes will have a chance to rebound from their second loss of the season on Wednesday when they host Presbyterian at Value City Arena (7 p.m. ET, Big Ten Network).
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