Paul Vernon - AP

2 months ago: Presbyterian's Zach Faircloth, right, goes up for a shot aginst Ohio State's Jon Diebler during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Columbus, Ohio, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Paul Vernon)

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I missed the first ten or so minutes of today's game returning from a trip out of town, but here are my thoughts on what I heard/saw (after I finally found a TV with the game on):

• While the game was still "in question", the Buckeyes were playing excellent man-to-man defense. There were a few lapses towards the end of the first half, but even with those lapses, the Blue Ho's Hose had only scored 21 points at the break. It was nice seeing Ohio State fly to the ball with some defensive intensity, which is often missing when we move to a man-to-man approach on defense.
  
• 53 points in the first half ,even against Presbyterian, is a nice thing to see with Evan Turner out of the lineup. What I found encouraging was how balanced the scoring distribution was; IIRC, at halftime, 5 players had 8 or more points, with Lauderdale chipping in with another 6. This team had to move into a nice, sharin'-and-carin' mindset with ET gone, and it seems to have done a pretty good job of it. Yes, I know, Presbyterian, but it's an encouraging start.
• The Presbyterian coach (I don't know his name, so let's just call him Some Poor Soul) described Lighty as the best "driver" of anyone they have played so far.  That's an impressive roster of teams which feature some pretty good guard play, incuding UNC and Clemson. I'm not sure if that's overzealous coachspeak or earnest praise, but Lighty showed some of that skill tonight, including one impressive drive from the right side that resulted in a quick bunny that made up 2 of his 20 total points on the night.
• Matta wanted Jeremie Simmons to step up his game this week and he kinda did, for like a half. I'm guessing he got some rest after putting up 8 points to go with 3 boards and 3 assists.
• Of course, less Simmons meant more PJ Hill, and PJ's eternal highwire bouncing-around-to-make-up-for-a-general-lack-of-talent act worked fairly well, as you'd expect it to against a team with nine losses in eleven games. He only totaled 9 points, 3 boards and 2 assists but he kept some plays alive that other players wouldn't have and did a good job drawing fouls.
• Diebler had an okay night playing exclusively behind the arc again, hitting 3 of 8 shots and totaling 12 points.
• I'm a little worried by the lack of William Buford in today's game. Yes, Ohio State had 53 points at the half, but only scored 25 afterward (when admittedly, the game was well out of reach), and I am greedy and Buford took the exact same amount of shots as Lightly and hit three fewer and that makes me sad. Buford looked great in stretches at Butler, but was kinda non-existent tonight. For now, these performances fight to a relative draw in the Thunderdome of my mind. Let's see how he does against DSU and CSU before we start getting concerned.

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