Ohio State Basketball Preview



My favorite time of year closing in soon, that’s right it is almost time for college basketball to start. I decided that I would try to start a blog and follow the Big Ten and the ACC. I figured the easiest way to start would be to look at The Ohio State Buckeyes.
I was recently looking at buying season tickets for the Buckeyes, it was a short look. This year I believe that the Buckeyes one of the worst out of conference schedules ever. Here are their non conference games: Walsh, Alcorn State, James Madison, UNC, California or Syracuse, Lipscomb, St. Francis, Florida State, Eastern Michigan, Butler, Presbyterian, Delaware State, Cleveland State and West Virginia. Are you kidding me? What makes it even worse for season ticket holders is that UNC and Cal or Syracuse aren’t even home games and they don’t play Michigan State at home. I know it’s tough for programs like Ohio State to schedule tough games especially now that the never know who is coming back. Come on though you have to get a few good home games to get people to spend their hard earned money.
Now that I have gone off on that tangent let’s take a look at a few of the players and what we can except from this year team.
- You have to start with Evan Turner, he is a freak of nature at 6’7” 205 Turner is one of the most athletic people in all of college basketball. Hey can take the ball strong to the whole and finish. The key to his game is going to be developing that 15’to20’ jumper, that will force players to guard him tight and allow for the blow by. If Turner can get in the lane he can really cause problems for opponents.
-David Lighty is another key for the Buckeyes. He needs to have a strong presence on the offensive side of the court. We all know that he can play defense but with Turner being the only big time scorer on this team Lighty will have to step it up.
-William Buford was a pleasant surprise on this team last year and could turn into a pretty good ball player if he steps it up on the defensive side of the court. He had his Freshman moments last year and most of those should be work out by now. He does need to start knocking down the 3 ball a little better this year only hitting on 36% last year.
-John Diebler? Can he really play, is he going to step up and become the ball player we all thought that he could be. He better come in big and stronger if he wants to keep getting better. This is just a question of how bad does he really want this.
As for the team there are a lot of questions, can any of the Freshman step up and help. I think that this is definitely a tournament team but with a early exit. I think that they will finish 3rd in the Big Ten but that will be talked more about in my Big Ten wrap up later this week. I will pick them to go 22-9 (12-6)