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Men's Basketball
Not Always Pretty but Bucks Back in Title Game
By Brandon CastelINDIANAPOLIS – After beating Michigan 69-68 on a buzzer-beater in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament Friday, Ohio State coach Thad Matta said his team lacked intensity.
After beating Illinois 88-81 in double overtime in Saturday’s semifinal, he said his players did not play like a team for much of the game.
“I just didn’t think that we were as dialed in,” Matta said after his team gave up a 14-0 run in the first half and then squandered a 20-0 run in the second half before winning in extra time.
“I thought the first half and I thought part of the second half, we were five guys playing basketball as five guys; we weren’t five guys playing together, especially at the defensive end of the floor.”
In other words, they didn’t play the way they had during the regular season when they came together to win the Big Ten title despite starting the year 1-3 in conference play. They were outrebounded in both tournament games. They turned the ball over a combined 30 times, including 10 from Big Ten Player of the Year Evan Turner against Illinois. They didn’t always share the basketball, they relied too much on Turner and didn’t close out on shooters behind the arc.
All of it compelled Matta to call a timeout early in the second half of the Illinois game where he laid into his players like a drill sergeant. At one point his face was so red his players had to wonder if their coach was about to pop a blood vessel.
“He was intense,” senior Kyle Madsen said.
“He didn’t think we were playing as hard as we should be and he was probably right.”
And yet here they are, back in the Big Ten Tournament title game for the second-straight year and the fourth time in five years. Despite playing poorly in the first two games by Matta’s standards, the Buckeyes are one win away from adding another ring to their collection.
“Obviously we know we can play better, but I guess one positive way to look at is we’ve probably only played about 15-20 minutes of good basketball in each game and we still won,” said junior Jon Diebler, who scored 14 Saturday after going for only three points Friday against Michigan.
“It’s scary to think if we put a full game together how good we can be.”
They showed how good they could be by winning 13 of their last 15 games during the regular season, with their only two losses coming against top 10 teams (West Virginia and Purdue). With Turner back in the lineup, the Buckeyes are borderline unstoppable when they are hitting shots and playing good defense. If Diebler or William Buford are on, their offense is tough to contain. If they’re both on, forget about it.
Ohio State is now 26-7 on the season, 23-4 with Turner in the lineup and 22-3 with a healthy Turner. They beat a Michigan team that was desperate to keep its season alive and followed it up with a win over an Illinois team equally desperate to avoid banishment to the NIT Tournament this postseason. It wasn’t always pretty, but the Buckeyes have a chance to add another title to their resume if they can defeat a Minnesota team Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS) that is playing its fourth game in as many days.
“We can sit back and take a deep breath because we did win. Obviously we would rather play bad and win than play bad and lose, but we’re all perfectionists,” Diebler said.
“We’re not always going to play perfect, but we strive to.”
They might need to be perfect tomorrow if they are going to beat a Minnesota squad that is coming off a 69-42 beatdown of 2009 tournament champion Purdue.
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