After a heartbreaking loss in East Lansing this weekend, Thad Matta’s Ohio State Buckeyes sit at 19-7 and 8-5 in the conference. With five conference games remaining before the Big Ten tournament, the Bucks are out of discussion for the regular season crown with the Wisconsin Badgers cruising. However, there is plenty to play for, and being favored in four of their last five regular season games, the Buckeyes can do a lot to improve their seeding in the jostling that is the Big Ten from second place on down.
Ohio State is an interesting team this season. After a light out of conference schedule (328th most difficult out of 351 teams) where they lost their only two formidable showdowns to North Carolina and Louisville, the Bucks looked painfully one dimensional and none too special. When you look at the seven Buckeyes losses, however, they have all been by single digits, and two of them have been lost on the game’s final possession.
One of the most critical things that has been holding the Buckeyes back has been their play at center. It showed again on Sunday as Amir Williams got another start for the injured Anthony Lee, who himself had replaced Amir in the starting lineup. Williams posted 8 points, 5 rebounds, and 1 block in 27 minutes. When you look at Amir’s numbers, his field goal percentage is a career high 69 percent, his block percentage of 11.2 percent places him 21st in the nation, and his defensive rebounding numbers have improved slightly over last year. Taking those numbers at face value, one would assume Williams would be comfortably holding down the starting job and playing big minutes, but he’s only played 43.6 percent of the team’s minutes this season despite missing just one game due to injury. Fellow seniors Lee and Trey McDonald haven’t been any better, which begs the question: what can Matta do about it?
Well, for short stretches in the past, Matta has allowed his teams to run center-less, extrapolating Thad’s strategy of a smaller, defensive-minded, respectable outside threat at the four position to the other spot down low. It’s happened roughly 8 percent of the floor time this season as the three centers are almost never on the court together and their minutes fall short of the total count by about that margin. This puts extreme stress on the Buckeyes’ interior defense, but it can do the same to the opposing defense.
The Bucks have a trio of 6-foot-7 forwards that fit Matta’s traditional power forward build in senior Sam Thompson, freshman Keita Bates-Diop, and sophomore Marc Loving. Bates-Diop leads the team in defensive rebounding percentage (21.6 percent) and is second to Amir in block percentage (8.2 percent), but he’s struggled to keep consistent minutes in the rotation even with Marc Loving having missed the last three games prior to Michigan State due to suspension. Loving took just one shot in five minutes on Saturday afternoon, and looks like he has a long way to go in terms of earning playing time back. Thompson is already used to gritty work inside despite his smallish frame. I think it’s silly to think the Buckeyes can go exclusively to a 6-7 and under lineup, but I do think they can find some ways to get their best five on the court. When the six or seven best guys aren’t your center, it takes a lot of working around matchups to do so.
What are some of the things that make this Buckeye hoops squad tick? For starters, a staple of Thad’s teams is active, turnover-forcing defense. The Buckeyes maintain that this year as they rank in the top 25 in both block (15.6 percent, 11th) and steal percentages (12 percent, 25th) while having the 16th-best turnover rate of 23.4 percent.
Despite the fact that D’Angelo Russell is responsible for so much of the Ohio State offense and has to work to start so much of it, the Buckeyes are outshooting their opponents at an astonishing clip. OSU’s effective field goal percentage is 11th-best at 56 percent and defensively, they’re allowing just 45.1 percent, 40th best. Things get really ugly when the Buckeyes turn it over, but it happens seldom as they’re coughing it up on less than 17 percent of their trips down the court (37th best).
Now, what are some of the shortcomings that have prevented this team from being just outside the discussion of the top teams in the nation? The first thing that sticks out is this team’s struggles at the foul line. They rank 291st in the nation in getting to the stripe. When they do get there, seven of the ten guys in the rotation that shoot it at under a 68 percent clip. Only Kam Williams (88 percent), Loving (80 percent), and D’Angelo Russell (77 percent) earn respectability there, but none of them gets to the line often. As a team, their 67.5 percent clip ranks them 233rd.
Next, the team doesn’t leverage the three point shot enough. They allow opponents to shoot nearly 39 percent of their shots (which was exacerbated by the zone defense earlier in the season) from behind the arc, which is way above the 34.2 percent national average. On the other hand, they themselves only shoot 32 percent of their field goals from deep range, which is mind-boggling since they are 37th in the nation in percentage (38.4 percent) and have three guys who have been spot-on from out there (Loving 53 percent, Russell 43 percent, Kam Williams 38 pecent, and even Keita Bates-Diop is 13-of-32 for 41 percent).
Finally, those critical of Matta’s historically short benches and heavy minutes for his starters can’t go to that well this season (at least not yet). Matta’s playing ten guys at least 21 percent of the team’s minutes. Russell leads the pack with 83 percent, and Thompson and Scott come in at 78 and 75 percent, but there has been real progress in forming a bench this season with plenty of young players that will have larger roles after this five-person senior class walks out the door.
Following this dive into some of the Buckeye stats, I’m left wondering how this team isn’t better. Granted, they’re doing alright and are in position to finish strong, get a bye in the Big Ten tourney and with a couple wins could work their way up into a 4 or 5 seed. But with a deep team―one that’s winning the turnover battle by such a large margin and shooting the ball so much better than their opponents―it seems like they have the most difficult things figured out to a point.
Go smaller and shoot more three pointers. That’s my advice to the Buckeyes as they head down the stretch. Finishing strong can help them put their name in behind Wisconsin in the conference picture.
