To me it was easy to figure out why Ohio State had such an easy time more often than not successfully bringing rain from above on the 13 of 24 three point shots they connected on Tuesday evening in an, as expected, less than thrilling competition versus the Indiana Hoosiers. (“Bringing rain from three” refers to a nicely arched shot attempt, angled high enough to touch the clouds and bring rain as the shot eventually successfully drops into the basket for a score)
Confidence had everything to do with it.
This season’s Ohio State team is not exactly a juggernaut riding a huge wave of success on making three point shots. Yet, as the score reached 33-10 in favor of the Buckeyes, three players, Jon Diebler, Jeremie Simmons and William Buford had combined to convert 8 of their first 9 attempts for the good guys. And as the first half ended Ohio State had fallen off that pace only slightly with makes on 11 of 16 threes. That’s some good shootin’ Tex! For a team that, at times, can struggle with making three pointers this performance could show the way for the Buckeyes to get it going in a bigger way from out there during the next four difficult games Ohio State faces. Those games being home and away series versus Michigan, a visit to Illinois, and a home game versus MSU.
I feel a lot of the teams success the other night in shooting the ball to do in no small way with the confidence they had in catching and shooting and releasing the ball. I think Ohio State’s players knew this was a team they were going to drill and the relaxed “We’ve got this one in the bag. We’ll show you we’re at another level from these guys” manner in which they played showed up mostly through success in shooting the ball. Indiana isn’t a great defensive team and Ohio State’s kids knew it could be taken advantage of in that area. Overall, I thought it was easy to see Ohio State knew it could work it’s will, both offensively and defensively, onto Indiana in this contest.
I sure do hope the residue of that confidence carries over Saturday in Ann Arbor. If the Buckeyes could find a way to get an early road win in conference I feel that would give this team the feeling it has weathered the storm of losing captain David Lighty, as well as seeing Anthony Crater transfer, and a season ending injury to Nikola Kecman. Yes, winning an early conference road would set the Buckeyes up well to be able to survive this 1st difficult stretch of the conference schedule without finding itself in a hole. Spending the whole conference schedule trying to do that over and over again is hard on a team’s psyche. Just ask the 2007/2008 version of the Ohio State men’s basketball team.
