Ohio State basketball: Keys for Buckeyes to beat North Carolina
By Jacob Rhymer
The Ohio State basketball team gets their last non-conference test before Big Ten play on Saturday when they face off against North Carolina at Madison Square Garden in the CBS Sports Classic. This is the ninth year of the mid-season event and the third time the Buckeyes meet the Tar Heels in this event.
The CBS Sports classic consists of four teams and the matchups are in a cycle that rotates each year. Ohio State is joined by North Carolina, Kentucky, and UCLA for this event that takes place every year. This year the Buckeyes are matched up with the North Carolina Tar Heels in this annual event.
North Carolina hasn’t had the year they were quite expecting as they started as the #1 team in the country and after a four-game losing skid, they are now unranked. The Tar Heels have now seemed like they have come back to Earth after blowout wins over Georgia Tech and the Citadel.
Ohio State could be catching them at the wrong time as they’ve started to turn things around, but the Buckeyes can still win this game. There are three main keys for the Ohio State basketball team if they want to beat the preeminent blue blood.
First, Ohio State must contain the guards of North Carolina.
1. The Ohio State basketball team must contain UNC’s guards
The Ohio State basketball team is going up against a team with a backcourt that coming into the season was dubbed as the best backcourt in the country. Caleb Love and R.J. Davis are two of college basketball’s best guards. Even though they haven’t been playing like it, they are still an electric backcourt and can flip a switch in a matter of seconds. Ohio State is going to have to contain these two to win this game.
In order for the Buckeyes to slow down the guards of North Carolina, the defensive pressure needs to be way up in this game. Love and Davis take over 50% of the shots in North Carolina’s offense. They like to get a head of steam and attack downhill to get a shot.
Defending these guards will be tough, but Ohio State will need to extend their pressure on the defensive end of the floor in this game. I think we see Bruce Thornton and Sean McNeil starting on Love and Davis. They will need to force the guards of North Carolina side-to-side and not let them get downhill.
The second key is that Ohio State needs to be aggressive on the glass against the Tar Heels.