Ohio State Basketball: Are Buckeyes a Top-10 Team in 2014-15?
The Ohio State football team dropped in the polls after beating Kent State 66-0 earlier this year, so Urban Meyer’s team would be forgiven if it were a bit jealous of its basketball counterpart’s jump from No. 14 to No. 12 after losing to Louisville.
That’s right, the Buckeyes climbed two spots in the Associated Press Poll released after losing their first game of the year. Given their position at No. 12 and the overall talent on the team, they should be able to make a run at the Top 10 at some point this season.
There are two ways to look at that jump even after a loss.
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For one, Ohio State fattened up on a schedule full of cupcakes and lost to the one quality team it has played thus far. In a vacuum, that fact is not encouraging with games against North Carolina and a deep Big Ten on the horizon.
What’s more, the offense looked lost against Louisville—although that is largely a testament to the Cardinals’ dominant defense.
The other way to look at it is that the Buckeyes came back from 19 points down in their first true road game of the season against one of the nation’s best teams and cut the lead to three with about a minute remaining.
The voters were clearly impressed with the Buckeyes’ efforts in the second half of the loss and rewarded them accordingly.
Shannon Scott played one of the worst games of his career at Ohio State against Louisville and finished with three points on 1-of-7 shooting. He also had zero assists. Still, Thad Matta’s bunch almost won the game with virtually nothing from the senior leader, which means the Buckeyes could theoretically beat Louisville with a better performance from Scott.
What’s more, D’Angelo Russell proved to the nation why he is considered a star in the making with 17 points, seven assists and six rebounds. He is the alpha-leader in the Ohio State offense and is dynamic enough to lead his team into the Top 10.
Matta also made sure some of the young guys picked up valuable experience, as Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports pointed out:
That experience will certainly prove beneficial down the stretch of the Big Ten season.
It is hard to truly judge if the Buckeyes deserve to be a Top-10 team this season, given that their six victories have come against UMass Lowell, Marquette, Sacred Heart, Campbell, James Madison and Colgate. Granted, it is better to beat these teams by significant margins than to lose to a squad like the New Jersey Institute of Technology on your home floor, but it is difficult to develop a complete evaluation of a team against vastly inferior competition.
That task won’t get any easier in the next three games either, as Ohio State has contests against High Point, Morehead State and North Carolina A&T on the immediate docket. It is not Ohio State’s fault that Marquette has struggled so much this season, and it has games against North Carolina and Louisville, but the nonconference schedule is lacking, to say the least.
That clash with the Tar Heels on December 20 will be a great measuring stick for where the program is at before Big Ten play.
Ohio State has all the ingredients of a Top-10 team with depth, a potentially explosive offense with key contributors and a lockdown defense. The defense, as it always is under Matta, will be the key to the Buckeyes’ entire campaign. It was critical in the comeback efforts against Louisville because it stifled the Cardinals’ shooting until the final minute.
The Buckeyes are only allowing 57.1 points per game—which is 28th in the country—and they rank 11th in Ken Pomeroy’s pace-adjusted defensive efficiency rankings. Having Amir Williams down low to block shots and wing players like Sam Thompson with athleticism and length to bother perimeter shooting helps, but it is the ball pressure of Scott and Russell that spearheads this defense.
Scott is averaging 2.6 steals per game, and Russell is at 1.9, but there are actually five players on the team averaging at least one steal per night. That type of swarming, pressure defense leads to easy opportunities on the other end.
On offense, Russell is the key as a future NBA player. He took charge in the second half against Louisville and is a threat to score from anywhere on the floor. However, Scott’s distributing (8.1 assists per game) and Marc Loving’s emergence (12.9 points a game) have been critical as well.
It is not just the presence of a few contributors that makes this offense dangerous, though.
Matta has 10 players averaging more than 11 minutes per game, which means he can consistently send guys with fresh legs on the floor who are all capable of finding the basket in different ways. The only real chance at advancing deep into the tournament is with contributions from a number of different sources, and the Buckeyes are deeper than they have been in years under Matta.
It is still far too early to completely judge the rankings, but teams that have been around the Buckeyes in the polls have struggled at times. North Carolina already has two losses and has to play Kentucky on Saturday. San Diego State scored a measly 36 points in a loss to Washington. Miami lost to Green Bay. West Virginia lost to LSU. And Kansas looked like a junior varsity squad against Kentucky (which probably says more about the Wildcats than the Jayhawks).
As long as the losses keep racking up from teams around the Buckeyes in the polls, they will have a stake to a Top-10 ranking.
The talent is there on both sides of the ball for the Buckeyes to climb in the polls. Now all they have to do is prove it against better competition and deliver in marquee contests against the Tar Heels and the Big Ten.
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