Men's Basketball
Buckeyes Trounce Wildcats 73-41 in Value City Yawner
By John Porentas

The crowd was flat, but the Wildcats (10-8, 0-5 Big Ten) still got flattened.

About the only thing quieter than the crowd at the Jerome Schottenstein Center was Northwestern's Princeton offense which managed all of 15 points in first half. Six of those points came gift wrapped as layups off OSU (15-3, 3-1 Big Ten) turnovers and three more came on a three point goal that went in off the glass. In CYO league they wouldn't have counted the three because the shooter didn't holler "glass", but it counted for the Wildcats. Take away the fast break points and the banker three and the Wildcats put up six points that you could point to and say they really earned at the intermission .

"Nothing very much went well tonight for us," said Northwestern Head Coach Bill Carmody. "I looked up and we had four points, both on breakaways and steals. We weren't able to do anything against their zone."

The zone Carmody referred to was the 2-3 zone defense the Buckeyes went to after about the third possession of the game and seemed to totally baffle the Wildcats. Northwestern turned the ball over 17 times against that zone and was able to shoot just 32.7 per cent from the field against it.

"I didn't think we were getting good shots," said Carmody. "And when we did, they weren't going in. We seemed to be robotic in the first half."

"We weren't planning on playing a lot of zone tonight and they weren't making shot early, so we kind of stuck in there (with the zone)," said OSU Head Coach Thad Matta.

And just when you thought it couldn't get much worse, the second half started.

The Buckeyes opened the half with a 13-3 run to extend their halftime lead of 19 points to 29 at 47-18 before the Wildcats could catch their breath and stem the tide for a while.

As for the Buckeyes, they pretty much took care of business. After committing eight turnovers in the first half OSU committed zero in the second half to rectify the one deficiency that OSU Thad Matta could mention after the game. Point guard Mike Conley was outstanding, scoring a game-high 17 points to go with 10 assists for a double-double. Conley also had just one turnover. Fellow guard Jamar Butler was the only other Buckeye in double figures with 16.

"It's one of those deals where we took what they gave us," said Matta. "Both of them I thought really played well."

"I thought that Michael played a really good game and was really tuned in for the first time he's gone against that type of defense. We really did a nice job of knowing where guys were and did a good job of moving the basketball around," Matta said.

"Mike (Conley) broke down the defense, the other guards broke down the defense and we were just finding each other open on the perimeter," said Butler.

The lone downside to Conley's night was a bump on the head he got when his head collided with that of a Northwestern player. Matta said that Conley was OK but did suffer a some momentary ill effects from the collision.

"He's fine. He and the kid hit heads and he kind of got a little dizzy there for a second, but was fine after that," said Matta.

The crowd did get worked up twice in the second half despite the one-sided game. They booed a contestant in one of those contests they run during timeouts when he couldn't identify an OSU player after getting the hints "He's a freshman, he's a guard, and he wears number 31." OK, the contestant did get it eventually, but he was really slow. The other time was when Daequan Cook (freshman, guard, number 31 if you're ever a contestant in one of those timeout contests) threw down aa dunk off an alley-ooop pass from Jamar Butler.

After further consideration, we're taking back what we said about flat crowd being flat. Given what they were watching, they were about as appreciative as they could be.

OSU freshman Center Greg Oden did not figure prominently in the OSU offense but did register five blocked shots and completely dominated in the paint defensively. Oden also pulled down a team-high six rebounds in 29 minutes of play.

"I thought he was great defensively," said Matta.

"He has a dominating presence on defense," said Carmody. "He affects the game in many ways even when he's not scoring. When we would get into the lane he would affect our guys's shots even if he didn't block them."

Notes:

* OSU center Greg Oden was sporting a new look against the Wildcats. Oden had grown a beard since coming to OSU, but shaved it two days ago according to Matta.

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