Our Honor Defend

It certainly was a great sports day for West Virginia University, if part of that required one of the worst displays of Buckeye basketball since the tail end of the O’Brien era.  Perhaps this comment on Eleven Warriors’ game preview was prophetic, or more accurately the dumb luck of a mouthbreathing partisan troll who couches coarse, or otherwise poor, English under the guise of “prediction” (the internets has lots of those types), but it was nevertheless on the ball.  In front of a national television audience, the Mountaineers promptly pummeled Ohio State by 28 points, handing the 13th ranked Buckeyes their first loss of the season.

Typically, management-types that you or I may know or work for use the criticism sandwich in evaluating performance.  I’m going to try it here, but it may look more like a criticism tostada.  Dallas Lauderdale played well, coming from the bench for consecutive games now.  His foul-shooting will never be anything to write home about (1/4 this game), but the big man finished with 5 points and 7 rebounds.  6 of those 7 rebounds came from the offensive end, with a few of them followed up with monster putback dunks.  He also had 2 blocks.  Jeremie Simmons and William Buford both had 11 points and statlines that weren’t awful (4/7 and 4/11 respectively), but no part of their game stood out like Lauderdale’s effort.

When the performance of the game is a 5 point, 7 rebound performance, the observer can predict to some statistical significance that the performance of everyone else was justifiable cause for seppuku.

This was the case today.  At its best, Matta’s offense privileges the ability for jumpshots to open up passing lanes and, accordingly, the interior game for the big men.  At its worst, Matta’s offense privileges contested 3 pointers mere seconds into an offensive set.  The latter is what we saw today.  Ohio State put up an embarrassing 2-18 mark from the perimeter as a team.  Jon Diebler — who, if you were not aware, is the all-time leading scorer in Ohio high school history… just in case you didn’t know — contributed the most to this statistic, going 1-7 from behind the arc.  He finished with 5 points for the game on the heels of a 2/10 performance.  He had as many field gaols as turnovers.

Elsewhere, highly-touted freshman center BJ Mullens had an impressive dunk early into the game.  Playing against smaller big men than he, Mullens found position for the Jeremie Simmons high pass and slammed in two points for a quick 6-2 lead into the game.  He added two free throws for the rest of the game, finishing with 4 points and just 3 rebounds.  Evan Turner’s offense was probably the worst offender of the bunch.  His 4/17 10pt performance, if not a career worst at any level, is certainly something that no one should ever have to watch again.

And still, Ohio State was ostensibly no worse than WVU in any category other than field goal percentage.  WVU was only +5 in the turnover margin, and both had similarly bad 3pt and free throw numbers.  Ohio State was only down 7 at half and were well within striking distance early into the second half.  De’Sean Butler, presumed player of the game for the Mountaineers, had to take an early seat with 14:51 left and the Mountaineers only up 9.  The scenario for Buckeyes — a furious rally with the Mountaineers’ best game performer on the seat — didn’t exactly take place.  In fact, the opposite happened.  WVU’s 21-4 run pushed the margin as wide as 26.  The game eventually ended with a 28 point margin for the Mounties.

There’s not a lot about this game that I feel the need to discuss.  Indeed, since my move, I rarely get to watch the men’s (or women’s) hoops team anymore.  On the rare occasion where the men’s hoops team is on television, I like to think that I deserve better than the effort I saw from the Buckeyes.  As it is, the Buckeyes will have plenty of time to retool, since losses have less meaning in this sport.