Game 2: Will the Buckeyes bring it?

Once Delaware State figured out how to avoid Ohio State’s half-court traps and the turnovers they caused, the Hornets hung with the Buckeyes for a while last Thursday night.

Fortunately for Ohio State, it had a double-digit lead to play with and was able to maintain it until it got its halfcourt offense untracked in the second half. But coach Thad Matta was not pleased with the energy his team brought into its opener, a shortcoming he no doubt addressed before tonight’s game with Bowling Green.

The Falcons come in with a 3-1 record, the only loss by six points at Minnesota on Nov.15. They are a deep and experienced team that could exploit the Buckeyes’ faults better than Delaware State did.

“What they did once they broke (the press) was they reset and were going to take their time and move it around a little bit,” Matta said of Delaware State. “You’ve got to keep playing. Teams want to do that. You can’t let up.

“As I told our guys, of their 22 points in the first half, probably 15 of them came in the last five seconds of the shot clock. That’s where you’ve really got to lock down and get the job done challenging shots and rebounding.

“When guys come into the game, whether they were starting and came back in, they’ve got to have a certain level of juice about them.”

Captain David Lighty called the team’s play “lackadaisical” afterward.

“They would get the ball on offense and kind of pass it around, and we kind of got lackadaisical, just standing around and not pressuring on defense, and it kind of trickled down to our offense,” Lighty said. “We can’t let that happen. It’s supposed to be us out there playing the same way all the time.”

Delaware State, playing its second game in as many nights, employed a zone defense the entire game, which also served to stunt some of Ohio State’s offensive movement.

Other things to look for tonight:

- Can Kyle Madsen, against better competition, continue the production he had against Walsh and Delaware State and remain an option at power forward?

- Ditto for Jon Diebler.

- Will William Buford score seemingly as effortlessly against Bowling Green as he did the first two games?

- Who besides Dallas Lauderdale is going to bang for rebounds with Bowling Green? And that’s assuming Lauderdale snags more than the one rebound he did against Delaware State. A more assertive B.J. Mullens would help the cause.

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Too close for comfort

Right: FORT LAUDERDALE: Ohio State’s Dallas Lauderdale defends the paint and stuffs the shot of Bowling Green’s Erik Marschall. (AP Photo)

Generally, the first few games on the schedule are suppose to be cupcakes, easy wins to pad a team’s NCAA tournament resume while getting ready for stiffer challenges down the road against better non-conference opponents and Big Ten foes.

Sure, Bowling Green gave Minnesota all they could handle back on Nov. 15 in the NABC Classic at the Metrodome, trailing the Golden Gophers by just three points with a little over three minutes left in the game before losing 68-61.

But who would of thought that the Falcons, making the two-hour trip along Route 23 could give Ohio State such a hard-fought game down to the bitter end?

Thanks to sophomore guard Jon Diebler, who scored 17 points, the Buckeyes’ held on to win 61-57 over Bowling Green at Value City Arena, Monday night.

After a dunk by Dallas Lauderdale with 14:38 left in the first half, Ohio State never trailed the rest of the period. The Buckeyes had a 30-24 advantage at intermission, and took their biggest lead after William Buford drained a jumper with 15:13 to go that put OSU up 40-27.

From that point, Bowling Green mounted an 8-1 scoring run fueled on two, three-pointers and Ohio State needed a 30-second timeout to regroup with 13:42 left still leading 41-35.

Diebler’s trey with 9:06 remaining put Ohio State up 46-40, but Bowling Green scored the game’s next eight points to take their first lead since the 15-minute mark of the first half.

Down by two, the Buckeyes took the lead back for good thanks to a pair of conventional three-point plays by Evan Turner and Lauderdale, and another trey by Diebler with 4:08 on the clock and Ohio State leading 55-50.

Bowling Green’s Joe Jakubowski scored on a layup with 1:29 left to make it a one-possession game as the Falcons trailed 57-54. After Turner couldn’t knock down a jumper from behind the arc for Ohio State, Jakubowski had a chance to tie the game with 32 ticks remaining, but his miss was rebounded by Turner, who was quickly fouled, and he made both of his free throw attempts.

With 11 seconds left, Bowling Green’s Brian Moten drained a triple that cut Ohio State’s lead down to 59-57, but David Lighty, who had been 0-for-3 from the foul line earlier, calmly sank a pair of free throws with 6.4 seconds to go that put the game away.

The Buckeyes really didn’t scorched the nets, shooting just 40.0 percent (20-of-50) from the field and 31.8 percent (7-of-22) from beyond the arc. Even standing still from 15 feet away, Ohio State was just 14-of-21 (66.7%) from the foul line.

Defensively, Ohio State held Bowling Green to 30.0 percent (23-of-59) shooting from the floor, and 26.3 percent (5-of-19) from three-point range.

One disturbing trend, the Buckeyes were outrebounded once again, as the Falcons had a 39-34 advantage off the glass.

With a close game like this, we definitely get to see how Coach Matta may substitute in the future.

Things we learned?

At point guard, junior Jeremie Simmons is a clear-cut choice after he played 30 minutes and scored six points with three rebounds and five assists. His backup, freshman Anthony Crater, logged 11 minutes and scored three points with a rebound and an assist, even though I thought Crater had played well against Delaware State and Walsh.

Lauderdale is a beast. He scored eight points with seven rebounds and six blocked shots in 29 minutes. In two games, he has 13 blocks. Ohio State’s other post player, 7-foot freshman center B.J. Mullens, who was the No. 1 recruit in the country in this freshman class, had just two points and one rebound in 11 minutes.

Will the real David Lighty please stand up?

Lighty played 36 minutes and took just five shots, scoring four points with five rebounds. He did a great job coming off the bench during his freshman year when the Buckeyes advanced to the NCAA championship game as a defensive stopper, but he needs to become a bigger force offensively.

Meanwhile, Diebler played a team-high 37 minutes and was 6-of-11 shooting from the field, plus 3-of-7 from beyond the arc. Diebler also had five rebounds and three assists while his wingmate Turner played 30 minutes and was the only other Buckeye to score in double figures with 12. He also pulled down a team-high eight rebounds.

Ohio’s Mr. Basketball?

I can see why William Buford was chosen ahead of Mullens as Ohio’s Mr Basketball last year. Buford scored nine points in 16 minutes of action. He needs more playing time.

Up next, Ohio State will host the Samford Bulldogs at Value City Arena, Saturday afternoon. Tip-off at Value City Arena is scheduled for 12:00 p.m., and the game will be televised on the Big Ten Network.