UMHOOPS: Previewing Ohio State Bball with Eleven Warriors.

Submitted by robbyt003 on

LINK

For those who don't know, Eleven Warriors is Ohio's version of Mgoblog (their love isn't just for gentlemen though).  

umhoops.com has an article where they did a Q&A with Eleven Warriors about this weekends matchup with Ohio State.  It's pretty interesting to see 11W perspective on their own team and how they predict the game to end.  

GO BLUE! BEAT OHIO!

Michael Scarn

January 11th, 2013 at 9:45 AM ^

Take last year's OSU team and subtract Sullinger and Buford while adding Robinson, Stauskas and McGary to last year's Michigan team (yes and subtract Stu and Novak and Smotrycz). I feel pretty good about this matchup.

Iceman

January 11th, 2013 at 9:57 AM ^

I have this wonderful feeling that McGary is going to have a fantastic game and will throw down an angry/monster/SC Top Ten dunk and absolutely silence that crowd

Young John Beilein

January 11th, 2013 at 11:48 AM ^

Yeah.  His game against Iowa was damn good.  If we can get that type of production consistently I think he's pretty close to (but not quite) freshman all-american.  As it is, he had a lot of positive plays against Nebrasky and I think he's coming along.  I dont think it's unreasonable to expect 7 and 8 from him next year splitting duty with J-Mo.  If Beilein moves him to the 4 and plays both maybe a double double average.  It's going to be tough to peg a starting 5 again next year.  But in a good way.

SF Wolverine

January 11th, 2013 at 10:22 AM ^

Be interesting to see how the freshman play down in Ohio, especially if they can get a lead or keep things close.  Hopefully, Nebraska was a bit of a wake-up on how hard you have to play in the B10 to succeed.  Key is going to be staying poised and responding to whatever runs Ohio is able to make. 

LSAClassOf2000

January 11th, 2013 at 10:28 AM ^

Thanks for sharing this, robbyt003.

One of the important themes that I was curious about (which they mentioned) is the inconsistency of Ohio State on offense, so I made myself this graphic representation of FG% for Michigan and Ohio State over their last ten games respectively (thumbnail link below).

 

Photobucket

Nebraska aside, ours is a relatively constant, even gradually improving performance on this measure, whereas Ohio State literally seems to be all over the place. Indeed, before Nebraska, the variance in the Buckeyes' shooting performance was nearly double our own. I agree that this will likely not be a blowout, but I have to think that the trend in this regard favors us.

Something else that struck me as well -  if you look at other stats like assists, rebounds and turnover %, we are very comparable to Ohio State actually.

 

kehnonymous

January 11th, 2013 at 10:42 AM ^

Eleven Warriors is OSU's attempted emulation of MgoBlog the same way that Katzinger's is Columbus' attempted emulation of Zingerman's

re: the game, it's a Big Ten road game against an opponent with a pulse so it won't even be that huge an upset if they win.  They have the perimeter defenders to contain Burke and the size to do damage on the boards, so this is going to be by far our biggest challenge thus far even if it isn't necessarily the best team we've played - I think at least NC State is better and this is the first time in ages that we're the better team than OSU.  I think DeShaun Thomas will *have* to go thermonuclear to give them a chance to win, though I'm sadly counting on that happening - no one else IIRC has stopped him so far.  However, we have four consistent offensive threats that you gotta respect - hopefully that is the difference.

Daniel

January 11th, 2013 at 10:46 AM ^

At this point, Eleven Warriors is pretty respectable. They've got a lot of people writing for them, and Ross in particular is quite informed.

They do worship the ground Urban Meyer walks on and have dismissed Michigan as their primary rival because Alabama is the team they're really going to have to bead in order to win that NC next year, but it is an OSU blog. So that's partially to be expected.

Darth Wolverine

January 11th, 2013 at 1:12 PM ^

I read some of the comments by their asshole and idiotic fans that they simply don't care about M's recruiting class and are now focusing on what teams like Alabama, LSU, and Florida are doing! LOL

I would LOVE it if that were true. I hope they overlook Michigan. If they're more focused on what SEC teams are doing, then they're more pathetic than I originally thought.

acnumber1

January 11th, 2013 at 10:56 AM ^

I visited elevenwarriors to look around and found a front page article about one of their RBs getting his medical redshirt after having played in 3 games this past season.  

Can we expect news on Devin's medical redshirt application any time soon?

 

(thought about creating a new thread for this, but, well...you know)

Darth Wolverine

January 11th, 2013 at 1:09 PM ^

Sort of off topic, yes, but after reading that preview I decided to venture to 11W (I rarely do that because I just hate that fucking team so much). I read comments in the forum topics about Lewan and Gardner...

unbelieveable

Their fans are so unbelievable. The stupidity that comes out of their mouths (fingers i guess?) is just amazing to me. I just...

<long sigh, breathing slowly to calm myself>

dahblue

January 11th, 2013 at 2:53 PM ^

I thought this observation from 11W was pretty astute:

one thing to keep an eye on will be how the game is officiated. Craft is a very physical on-ball defender and he’s been a little over-aggressive, getting his 2nd foul way too early in the opening half

It seems like Craft could be called for a foul on nearly every play, but the aggressive player often gets the pass.  I'm hoping Trey can muscle through Craft and draw those early fouls.  Either that, or he blows by Craft for a nice lob to THJ or Little Dawg.