Diebler/Simmons/Hill are the key. Lauderdale won't do anything in the post (please dear God Tubby don't double him).
If two of those guys gets 9-15 pts on 3s each it will be very difficult to win. Turner can get his 20 pts and the Gophers are still in good shape but if they let these guys hit outside shots there will be trouble at Williams.
Expect plenty of pressure on Hill - we'll see if he can handle it. The Buckeyes are not that deep so if we can make these guys run a little bit it could tire them out and make their outside jumpers suffer some.
The inside defenders have to be able to play great help defense when Turner is on the drive.
Turner is the key player, he always has been and always will be the key player for this OSU team - the stretch without him made that abundantly clear. You have to slow him down & get him to turn the ball over & if you don't, he's the one who's going to get guys like Diebler and Simmons some open looks & once they get some shots to fall, then they start playing better. Turner is going to run the point, Hill might not play much at all. I expect Matta to ride Turner, Lighty, Buford and Diebler as much as possible. Lauderdale is a fairly average college player apart from his shotblocking, so no reason to worry about him burning you on offense.
I personally would take Westbrook over Diebler. Diebler can't create his own shot and he doesn't really do anything other than shoot and make an occasional assist, and he doesn't compete as hard as Westbrook. Diebler compared to Hoffarber, however, is a different story.
Honestly, if I'm a Gopher fan, I'm concerned about my team's prospects this season because you seem to have struggled to beat Penn State at home - PSU is not one of the league's better teams - and don't have any good wins all year outside of Butler. Beating up on bad teams is one thing, winning games against good teams is quite another. I am still trying to figure out where this Gopher team fits in the Big Ten, but so far the performances against the better teams has been below expectations for me.
Now, for the person who said OSU is overrated, well, you kind of have to be rated to be overrated, don't you?
Unranked is unranked. Obviously, OSU without Turner isn't anything special, but with him they're absolutely worthy of being considered one of the top teams in the Big Ten. Turner is a difference-maker.
Turner is physically able to play his normal game or else he wouldn't have played against Indiana. Now he might still be somewhat rusty with his skills and conditioning, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him play 30+ minutes in this game, knowing how Matta rides his best players as much as possible. Honestly, the odds are that if he plays less than 30, it's going to be due to foul trouble rather than conditioning.
