Buckeyes continue to struggle with consistency

By Bob Baptist

The Columbus Dispatch

PITTSBURGH

Lenzelle Smith Jr. said he could tell during pregame warmups Thursday night that his Ohio State teammates were not taking their first opponent in the NCAA Tournament seriously.

Some fans would say the Buckeyes haven’t taken pregame warmups seriously all season, opting for dunk contests and casual three-point shooting instead of a more regimented preparation.

But there is a difference between the two.

“Sometimes, some of that stuff picks us up and gets us motivated, like the dunk contests. It gets guys motivated and gets the energy going,” Smith said. “We’ve had games where we’ve played phenomenally coming out of the gate.

“But I can tell when certain guys aren’t ready to go. They’ll just come out and be lackadaisical, be cool. You can’t have cool guys in this tournament because that’ll get you beat.”

The second-seeded Buckeyes never seemed in danger of losing to being beaten by 15th-seeded Loyola (Md.) in the second half Thursday. But they seemed to toy with the Greyhounds, letting them get just close enough to have hope before running away from them again.

Ohio State won 78-59 to advance to a third-round game today against seventh-seeded Gonzaga. Gongaza.

“We did some good things,” coach Thad Matta said. “We didn’t sustain it to the level we needed to. That was probably, I think, what left the (bad) taste in our mouths. We’ve always talked about that consistency, that we’ll take consistency over greatness. We just didn’t have enough of that.”

Jared Sullinger said the Buckeyes lacked the energy they played with the previous two weeks in winning a share of the Big Ten championship and reaching the final game of the conference tournament.

“A big thing with this basketball team is two words: energy and enthusiasm,” he said. “When we come in and have that, I think we’re a great basketball team. But when we don’t have that, we’re mediocre.

“I think we took Loyola kind of as trying to push them to the side looking forward. I thought that was a team mindset, not an individual mindset. But I think that was just a bump in the road. We treated that as a loss. Even though we won, we treated it as a loss to refocus and get back on track to playing our best basketball.”

Smith said that although he can tell when teammates aren’t in the proper frame of mind, he has to pick his spots when to say something. He is a sophomore and, statistically at least, the least-accomplished of the five starters.

“I’m more and more trying to spark us on defense. I kind of have a right (to try to lead) on defense,” Smith said.

“But it’s up to the guys whether they want to listen or not. You can’t lead anyone who doesn’t want to be led. A lot of that comes from us communicating and wanting to jell together as a team. We struggle with that sometimes. You can say something, but it’s up to the team to listen. If they don’t want to listen, then I can’t do anything about that.”