Ohio State basketball: Justice Sueing key to season success

The Ohio State basketball team will have a lot of new faces on the court when they play their first game this season. They have a full class of freshmen coming in, as well as three transfers. There are only four guys who have played minutes for the Buckeyes before.

One of those guys is Justice Sueing. Sueing missed all but two games last year due to an abdominal injury. It was a big loss because of how versatile he is on the defensive end. His ability to switch 1-4 is really helpful for Chris Holtmann’s defensive scheme.

Sueing will be the guy that determines how far this Ohio State basketball team can go. If he is able to come back fully healthy, that will be great news. How he develops his offensive game is going to be critical as well. He still hasn’t gotten back to the point where he was at Cal when he was scoring 14.3 points per game.

Even though he hasn’t gotten to that level of scoring since he’s been at Ohio State, he was able to increase his efficiency in the 2020 season when he was healthy. He went from shooting 43% from the field up to 49%. From three, he bumped up his percentages from 30% to 36%.

It’d be great to see him bump those percentages up even further. He’s probably going to be the guy who is taking the most shots on the team. If not the most, then second-most. He has to be efficient with those shots to give Ohio State more options on offense.

Sueing is really good at slashing through the lane and using his body to get into good spots to score. If he can do that this year, this team has a shot to finally break through that first-weekend wall that they keep hitting in March Madness.

These next few months are critical for this team to get better. They need to keep doing just that before they play their first game in the Fall.