Well, I guess the best news is that it never became the blowout it looked like it might be.

Well, there is other good news, I suppose, along with some bad:

• William Buford finally decided to show up for a game, scoring 20 points and grabbing seven boards. He won't be to this team what Evan Turner was, but if Ohio State can get similar effort through this stretch without him, a better-than-.500 record until Turner returns is certainly attainable. He needs to tamp down on those turnovers, though.
  
• Diebler will never diversify his game, but he needs to. When the threes aren't falling, he adds nothing to the offense. What I feared would happen basically did: with no Turner to worry about, teams honed in on forcing Diebler to take contested shots, and when a Diebler three gets contested, you know it's not going to fall.
• David Lighty did quite a bit of work offensively, but that came with a few defensive lapses; lapses we can't afford on an already iffy perimeter defense team. He's our best defensive player who actually has an offensive, so I'm not advocating for him to sit or anything.
• Take away the fouls, and Dallas Lauderdale was alright. I also think a few of the calls on him were questionable, but we'll get to that in a minute. If you have high expectations for DL, well, first: why? and second: lower them. Doing so will make games like yesterday a lot more easy to digest. He'll be serviceable against teams with no-talent big men and turrible [/Barkley] against teams with athletic ones. The scary thing about yesterday is that Butler is not particularly big (Gordon Hayward is just 6'8") and still did what it wanted around the basket.
  
• Everyone's making a big deal about Butler's 19-2 run, and understandably so, because at one point Ohio State didn't score a field goal for five eleventy billion game minutes. While that was agonizing, I was encouraged by the ensuing 16-2 run that made it 69-66 with under a minute remaining. This run was precipitated by a switch to 1-2-2 full court press, which clearly flustered and frustrated the Butler offense. Why this defense wasn't used earlier is something I'm probably not qualified to answer, but it is frustrating to see something finally work only to have it come way too late.
• It is a principle of mine to never, ever, ever blame a game on referees in either football or basketball. For all the blown and missed calls that genuinely determine the outcome of a game, there are a hundred innocuous fouls that are easily made up by baskets that should have been made, first downs that should have been earned, and touchdowns that could have easily been scored. Complaining about the refs is like complaining about the whether; sometimes they/it suck(s), but there isn't shit you can do about it so bitching is pointless. Anyway, all that being said, the refs blew some easy ones yesterday; and while they didn't directly influence the outcome of the game, it was enough to make the game twice as frustrating. They missed a carrying call late in the game and then followed it up by blowing a charging call. ElevenWarriors (I always resist the urge to type ElvenWarriors; I hope I'm not the only one) explains:
  

Unfortunately, the refs would then deal OSU a major blow on the ensuing possession by missing what looked like a carrying violation then blowing a more obvious charging call on Willie Veasley. Instead, Simmons was whistled for a blocking foul, Veasley promptly buried both free throws and a missed three by Simmons on OSU’s next trip down sealed the deal.

and then follows it up with my thoughts exactly:

I should be clear that I’m not crying too much sour grapes on the missed calls as this game was clearly lost via the two points in nine minutes combined with Matta probably being a little tardy on installing a press....

So pinning this loss on the refs is boneheaded, but you can't fault me for screaming at my TV yesterday.

All in all, minus that 19-2 run, the Buckeyes looked far better on Saturday than I expected them to, especially in their first game without ET. It's clear that they miss him, but that's to be expected; we need other scorers to step up, and Buford (20 pts) and Lighty (16 pts) sorta did. Diebler did not, and that's worrisome. Fortunately, we have three cupcakes coming up that will hopefully allow the team to jell in advance of the Rose Bowl Eve game at Wisconsin, which will be a lot more revealing about where this team stands tourney-wise than this game.