So I am interested it what others think about Michigan. I am getting the sense that they may have peaked too early. I have watched some of their recent games and just not blown me away. The OSU game was a tough one and if OSU could hit a 3 or not do stupid things it would have been a lot closer. They just don't seem as dominant as they were earlier. Oddly enough, even though they stomped us earlier in the year, I would like to see them in the BTT before seeing Mich St again. I Michigan caught us at a good time for them, but they don't scare me.
As an Ohio State fan that game was frustrating to watch. Michigan's D has been lights out and in that game the Buckeyes shot only 36.5% including a dismal 23.8% from behind the arc but, watching the game, it seemed like the Buckeyes got plenty of open looks and just couldn't hit the broad side of a barn from the inside. I don't remember when it was during the game but the announcers at one point talked about Ohio State's misses and commented that the possession was good from Ohio State's perspective, they got the look they wanted, they just flat missed. I didn't feel like Michigan's D was suffocating, I just felt like the Buckeyes couldn't shoot straight.
Not that Ohio State necessarily would have won, but the game would have at least been competitive if they could have made a normal % of reasonably open looks from long range. Ironically, our post guy was 2-2 behind the arc but the rest of the team went 3-19:
- 1-2 Andre Wesson
- 1-3 Muhammad
- 0-2 Jallow
- 0-1 Jackson
- 0-3 Ahrens
- 1-5 Washington Jr.
- 0-3 Woods
It probably wouldn't have mattered because the Buckeyes lost by 16 so they would have needed to make six more threes to win and 11-21 isn't very realistic. That said, if they had made just two more they'd have been at a pretty reasonable 7-21 and lost by 10 or if they had made three or four more they would have been around 40% and been within 4-7 points.
On the other part of what went wrong for Ohio State, the Buckeyes committed 19 turnovers. Yikes! You aren't going to win a lot of games doing that. Some of that is obviously a credit to Michigan's defense but I also thought there were a lot of "stupid things" done by Ohio State. A fair number of those turnovers were just stupid unforced errors that I can't explain.
All-in-all, I view the Buckeyes as a borderline tournament team. My guess is that when the season ends Ohio State is either going to be a 8-11 seed type "barely-made-it" team or a high seed in the NIT. Going into the Michigan game, at their place no less, I thought of the Wolverines as a #1 or #2 seed type team and expected them to run the Buckeyes out of the gym. Coming from that perspective I was not impressed with the Wolverines. I felt like the Buckeyes had a terrible shooting night and made a bunch of dumb mistakes and otherwise could have won. If you had told me before the game that Ohio State was going to have 19 turnovers and miss a slew of open three-pointers I would have guessed that the Wolverines would win by 30+.