Barry Sokol on Sports

The Ohio State Buckeyes lead by freshman guard Evan Turner and senior point guard Jamar Butler scored 13 points each Monday night to hold off Coppin State 47-39.

Thad Matta decided to change the starting lineup and started freshman guard Evan Turner, as he made his first collegiate start in place of freshman shooting guard Jon Diebler who had started all the previous games until Monday night.

Turner did well by shooting 5-8 from the field and 3-4 from beyond the arc for a total of 13 points and showed great hustle by getting 3 steals, but he did have 5 turnovers.

T McKee scored 19 points and grabbed 9 rebounds and E Hayden contributed 10 points to lead Coppin State.

Ohio State came out strong from the beginning of the game to start with an 8-0 run, while Coppin State had to take two 20 second timeouts in less than 3 minutes into the game.

The 8 point margin to begin the game was the biggest lead Ohio State would have all game, besides the final score as Coppin State stayed close with Ohio State throughout the whole game.

Ohio State shot 18-of-41 from the field for 43.9% and 8-of-22 from the 3 point line, while Coppin State shot 16-of-45 for 35.6% and 3-12 from the 3 point line.

Coppin State would take the lead for the one and only time of the game 33-31 with 10:37 left in the game.

Ohio State would battle back and gain the led as Coppin State stayed within two points until 4:27 left in the game when Othello Hunter made a lay-up to put Ohio State up 41-37 as Ohio State went on an 8-0 run - just like they did at the beginning of the game - to close the game out 47-39.

Not only was the low score of the game a surprise to me, but that Ohio State struggled and barely could beat a second-rate team like Coppin State at home by only 8 points. Ohio State played Coppin State last year at home and annihilated Coppin State 91-54. I was expecting Ohio State to win by at least 20 points. Coppin State dropped to 3-7, while the Buckeyes improved to 5-3.

The interesting thing is Coppin State’s next game is against the Dayton Flyers Saturday night at UD Arena (I will be there) – so it will be interesting to see how Coppin State matches up and plays against Dayton Saturday night.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 4:39 am and is filed under Basketball, Ohio State Buckeyes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.