Blog changeover update time!

They have already made the announcement, so I figured I might as well too.

The next Buckeye blog at SBN will be run by some of the more grizzled veterans of the Buckeye blogosphere: the guys from the Buckeye Battle Cry. Do not fear, Buckeye partisans: you will be in good hands. The BBC is already one of the best places to go for Ohio State analysis on the internets, and over here on SBN, I'm sure they'll keep up the good work. Some of you may already know Jeff as the man behind the Texas and Iowa "Had A Bad Day" 'low-light' videos.  It's really too bad he to change (or remove altogether) the original backing track due to copyright crap; they were originally edited to include that "Had A Bad Day" song that was so ubiquitous that year. Still, the man - and everyone else at that site - does good work.

I will contribute - in the form of fanposts, mostly - at the new site, so if you've got a sexual fetishism hankering for my thoughts, I'll provide them when and if I can. Regardless, we're now reaching the endgame here at WWAHT; expect plenty more basketball coverage up until the very last day before the Rose Bowl, during which I will unload my Oregon preview and final prediction. It's been fun, folks, but, as the Beatles sung in one of their most innocuous songs, life goes on.

Don't forget to participate in the blog research survey sometime before midnight tonight, when it wraps up: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

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.

Don't forget to help Toby with his blog survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

This past summer, I discussed, at great length, the possibility of Big Ten expansion. I then examined the following candidates and the likelihood that they would actually pack things up and move to a new conference (or to a conference in the first place)

- Cincinnati

- Iowa State

- Syracuse

- Missouri

- Pittsburgh

- Louisville

- Notre Dame

- and MilCardFan chipped in with an out-of-the-box suggestion, Nebraska

Surprise surprise, on the eve of what will likely be yet another disappointing bowl season, the issue has come up again:

Continue reading this post »

With an upcoming stretch of Presbyterian (2-8), Delaware State (4-4) and Cleveland State (4-6), the Ohio State basketball team faces a crossroads not unlike the one the football team faced following the USC loss. This team needs to find a number of things: an ability to score consistently enough from different parts of the hardwood, a vocal leader outside of Evan Turner, and an ability to consistently defend something aside from an opponents' intermediate-range game.

While Ohio State will not solve its problems by squaring off against the Poor Sisters of Mercy programs 1, 2 and 3, it can at least hone some skills that are definitely going to be needed to have a good Big Ten stretch run. Here are the key areas that I feel need work if we want to beat most Big Ten teams, let alone the Badgers:

• Not to hammer the obvious too much here, but it's going to take more than Will Buford to make up for Turner's absence, and that's especially true for Ohio State's limited inside game. No one currently can offer the penetration threat that Turner did, but someone will have to at least attempt a reasonable approximation off of it to take a little bit of pressure off of Jon Diebler. Presently, Ohio State's offense is this: move the ball around as much as possible on the perimeter, feed the ball to Lauderdale only if there is no one within twenty miles of him, and hope Diebler eventually gets something resembling an uncontested shot. True, this isn't all that different from the "wait until Turner does something spectacular" approach of the first eight or so games, but it's even more of a high-risk, low-reward scenario because Diebler isn't nearly as consistent of a scorer as Turner. Relying solely on this guy is a recipe for disaster. If the guy's shot is even remotely contested, it's not going to fall. That's just a sad fact of life. Lighty and Buford both have the ability to be the Turner-esque inside foil to Diebler's outside game, and I hope we see this develop over the course of the next few games.
  
• A little bit more concerning the offensive gameplan. I'm not under the illusion that a powerful, consistent inside game off of penetration is ever going to develop, so there needs to be a Plan B. And that Plan B is getting Jon Diebler to grow a set. Dude just can't chuck up treys, contested or uncontested, and expect just that to be his contribution to his offense. I know the kid's a sharpshooter at heart, but the threat at least has to be there. Hanging out on the perimeter all game will get him erased by opposing defensive gameplans early and often, just as we saw against the Bulldogs.
• Defensively, I realize there aren't a lot of changes that can be made personnel-wise, but schematically, I'd favor some more looks at that 1-2-2 press. It showed up way, way too late at Butler and clearly throttled the Bulldog offense. If Ohio State finds itself struggling against these jabronis we have coming in, or even if it's experiencing the expected amount of success, it wouldn't hurt to give this look some more practice.
• I'd like to see Dallas Lauderdale get some more help. I know we're not very deep on the inside, and I'd rather have him out there than Kyle Madsen and Zisis Sarikopolous, but the guy has limitations that no amount of experience will overcome. I shudder to think of him alone against any Big Ten Power Forward/Center combo you can name, and I'd like to see a few new non-1-2-2-affiliated wrinkles to our post defense that allow some others to help shoulder the burden.
  

Of course, I'm not "expecting" all, or even half of these things to actually happen. Matta's a man with a plan, and I may just be talking out of my ass as an amateur observer. Nevertheless, I'd like to see this team make some readily-apparent strides, even if I know they're coming against the college basketball equivalent of jobbers. Improving on at least a few of these things will help tremendously by the time conference season kicks in.

ed. note: Don't forget to help Toby with his blog survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

(ed. note: This guy e-mailed me all this stat-wonk stuff the other day, and, rather than stealing it and labeling it as my own - like any good blogger - I recommended he post it as a fanpost. Well, he did, and I think it's a rather good yarn and a refreshingly fair (to both sides) departure from the YOUR CONFERENCE SUCKS / NO, YOUR CONFERENCE SUCKS crap that has permeated most discussions surrounding the Rose Bowl. Enjoy.)

As most everyone (last time I saw it, ESPN's poll had it ~75-25 in favor of Oregon) seems to be favoring Oregon, and as most of the arguments tend to run along the lines of: "Ohio State has never seen anything like Oregon's offense (did you know the BigTeleven sucks at offense?)" and the equally entertaining rebuttal of "well, Oregon has never seen anything like Ohio State's defense (your offense is only awesome because the Pac10 is terrible at defense)", I thought that it was time for some good old fashion statistics.  Because, after all, statistics NEVER lie.  Ever.

So, the method (all numbers from NCAA stats page, with games against FCS teams excised):

Offense- I removed Ohio State/Oregon's points and then recalculated the Scoring Defense value for each opponent (in ppg allowed).  I then compared the points scored by Ohio State/Oregon to the season Scoring D value and averaged the % difference over the schedule.  This gives a value of what, on average, the team did to their opponents compared to what all of the opponents' opponents did to the opponents.  Or...something like that.  Negative value means you scored less than expected, 0 means you scored the exact average, positive you scored more.

Results:  Ohio State: +25.04%, or 1.25 times an opponent's Scoring D value

              Oregon: +64.62%, or 1.64 times an opponent's scoring D value

So, as expected, Oregon appears to have a far more explosive offense.  The problem for Oregon is when you try and do some extrapolating (which, with statistics, is always a great idea).  Ohio State sports a stellar scoring D of 12.17 ppg, while Oregon's is a slightly less stellar 23.58 ppg.  A little multiplication gives an expected game score (based on only Offensive Expected Output) of:

                                             Ohio State: (1.25*23.58) = 29.475, or 29

                                             Oregon :  (1.65*12.17) = 20.081 or 20

And, all is well (from the Buckeye perspective).  Since that went so well, why not the defense?  Same method, just switch to opponent Scoring Offense and Ohio State/Oregon points allowed.

Defense:   Ohio State: -54.62%, or 0.4538 times Opponent's Scoring O value

                 Oregon: -17.82%, 0.8218 times Opponent's Scoring O value

Again, the expected wins out and Ohio State appears to have the stouter D.  Taking Scoring offense values for Ohio State (29.25) and Oregon (37.67) into account, the expected final score (D values only) becomes:

                                             Ohio State: (0.8218*29.25) = 24.04, or 24

                                             Oregon: (0.4538*37.67) = 17.09, or 17

So , either analysis predicts a close Ohio State win, with a combined average coming to:

                                              Ohio State 26        Oregon 18

The idea with this was to come up with a way around the whole 'is the offense great because the defense sucks, or does the defense suck because the offense was great' rigmarole.  In this method, I am not looking at strict rankings, but comparative measures.  This allows for you to assume the crappiness of Big10 offenses (or Pac10 defenses) to your black heart's content.  The point remains: even if offenses in the Big10 stunk, Ohio State still held them to less than half what everyone else held them to, on average.  Conversely, even if Pac10 defenses were not so good, Oregon still blew them out of the water, and by far more than everyone else who had to good fortune to play them.  Still, this isn't exactly gospel, seeing as I ignored all personnel match ups, special teams, and anything/everything else that plays a part in college football. 

If anyone wants to see the actual charts, in all their number-y glory,  please let me know.  I also have similar data on rushing and passing attacks, but this was long enough already.

Go Bucks!