Ohio State basketball: Why Buckeyes have a great shot at making the Sweet 16
By Jacob Rhymer
The Ohio State basketball team’s offense needs to be much better
The offense for the Buckeyes also has to be better against Villanova and I’m confident that it will be. Against Loyola Chicago, the play on the offensive end was atrocious, to say the least. I don’t see the Buckeyes having another poor shooting effort in back-to-back games.
The Buckeyes shot a horrible 1-15 from beyond the arc on Friday, an ugly 6.7%. They absolutely cannot shoot that bad against Villanova. If they do they will have to rely on their defense which was great against Loyola, but during the whole season the effort defensively has been skeptical.
Like most teams, Villanova doesn’t have a matchup for EJ Liddell. Loyola Chicago statistically is a better defensive team than Villanova and Liddell still went for 16 points and 10 rebounds with half of his points coming from the free-throw line. For how spectacular Liddell is offensively and with his capability of drawing fouls, he creates a really difficult matchup for Villanova.
As we’ve seen already in this year’s edition of March Madness, anything can happen. The Buckeyes just need to focus on playing their game. They have to take care of the ball, rebound, and score a lot more if they are going to pull off the upset against the surging blue-blood and advance to the Sweet 16.
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The Buckeyes play Villanova in the second game of the day on Sunday. Tip-off is scheduled to be at 2:40 in Pittsburgh in what should be an exciting game!