Men's Basketball
A Closer Look at the NCAA Championship Game
By John Porentas

Three days after the fact, the OSU loss to Florida in the national championship game looks much the same that it did the day it happened. The Gators won simply because they were better. That was our story the night of the game, and we're sticking to it, but today we'd like to take one last look back at that game in a bit more detail to try to figure out exactly what the differences were in the two teams.

If you watched the game you were probably amazed at how well the Gators shot threes, and how poorly the Buckeyes shot them, and its easy to want to say the outcome of the game was determined by a good shooting night by one team and a poor shooting night by the other. There may be some truth to that, but we don't think that's the whole story. We think there were reasons for both of those realities.

Why the Gators Made Threes: Go to any Division I basketball practice and you will be amazed at how well players shoot threes. Threes drop like layups at practice when nobody is guarding shooters. At that level of play, three-point shooters are deadly accurate, often making 60 or 70 percent of their attempted threes when unguarded. More on this later.

The story of why the Gators shot well in the national championship game really begins on December 23. That's the day the Gators embarrassed the Buckeyes in Gainesville, defeating them by 26 points. In that game Florida guard Taureen Green made hash of the OSU defense by coming around screens and getting to the rim for layups or to draw fouls. Green ended with a game-high 24 points. When Green wasn't scoring inside, Florida's big men were. The Buckeyes wanted to take that away from Florida this time around, and actually did so for the most part.

OSU set its defense to prevent Green from slashing to the rim. They did so two ways. For starters, they played a little looser on the perimeter to give themselves a little more cushion. They also had Greg Oden hanging back in the paint instead of flying at shooters for two reasons: first, if anybody managed to come down the lane, he would be there as a last-line of defense and second, he didn't have to leave his man (a Florida big) to defend the outside shot thereby making the interior defense tighter.

"We took away what we wanted to take away," OSU Head Coach Thad Matta said after the game.

OSU's problem, however, was that in taking away the paint, they gave something up, and that was perimeter defense. Too many times Florida's shooters were too open, and like good Division I shooters (remember the first paragraph), they knocked down open shots.

The Buckeyes were forced to defend the Gators a certain way by the Gators' strength at guard and on the baseline. OSU's gamble in the national championship game was that Florida would not be able to knock down relatively open threes, but the Gators got it done. It was more than just a case of being hot, however, it was a case of forcing the Buckeyes to play a certain way, then taking advantage.

Why the Buckeyes Shot Poorly from Three: The Buckeyes did miss a number of open threes, threes they could have and probably should have made, but there were also a bunch of them that were contested effectively by the Gators.

Florida Head Coach Billy Donovan had great respect for OSU center Greg Oden. So much, in fact, that he knew his team really couldn't stop him, and that, in an odd way, contributed to OSU's woes from three-point range.

"Where they're (Ohio State) a real major problem is when Oden's getting his 18 or 20 and you look down and they made nine, 10, 11 three-point shots in the game," Donovan said.

"I knew we were going to have a tough time (with Oden). I really felt like the three-point line was so critical in the game. If we would have given Oden 20, 25 and could have guarded the three like we did, I probably would have taken that. I wanted them to beat us with two-point shots," Donovan said.

Donovan essentially conceded Oden his 25 by guarding him one-on-one with a parade of three defenders instead of doubling Oden. By doing so, he was able to use the defender that would have doubled on Oden to guard on the perimeter, and that affected OSU's three point shooting.

"They played great perimeter defense because they isolated in the post, played the one-on-one, and they just stuck on their shooters," said OSU forward Matt Terwilliger.

The Gators were able to adopt the strategy because with three big men (Noah, Horford and Richard) they had 15 fouls to give on Oden. For the record, that trio collected 12 of their allotted 15 in defending Oden thereby necessitating the use of Marreesse Speights on Oden as well, but they got just enough done to limit Oden to the 25 or so that Donovan wanted.

"They had four bodies running in against me and Chris Richards, I swear he plays on the football team," said Oden after the game.

By the way, the Gators led the nation in three-point shooting defense this year. For the season Florida's opponents made 5.2 threes per game in 18.0 attempts for a success rate of 28.5 percent. The Buckeyes made 17.6 percent in the championship game. If they had shot 28 percent, they would have made about two more, still not enough to win the game.

The Overall Picture: The Gators simply had the players that enabled them to play the Buckeyes in a way that not many other teams could. The didn't double Oden, and that allowed them to guard the three-point line more effectively. They also forced the Buckeyes to defend them in a way that allowed their own shooters that split second of extra time that makes the difference in Division I basketball. There was more at work as well, namely Florida's overall team experience.

"I don't even know if it's so much their skill level. It's just their intensity and they know how to win," said Terwilliger.

"That was the big thing tonight. All of their players on the floor knew how to win."

"They were the defending national champions, now the back-to-back national champions. They've been on this stage before and they showed that," agreed Jamar Butler.

"Not so much their intensity but their will to win," continued Terwilliger.

"When they needed a play somebody stepped up and took over and did it; Horford, Brewer, Humphry, all of them just stepped up when they needed a play and they got it done," Terwilliger said.

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