Ohio State is one of the best shooting teams in the country as the Buckeyes shoot a combined 49.4 percent from the field, good for third in the country. It doesn’t hurt when their best player, Jared Sullinger has tremendous discipline with his shooting, hitting 53.6 percent of his shots, and their sharpshooter, Jon Diebler, leads the nation in 3-point shooting (102-204 from downtown).
What was the difference between Syracuse’s win over Villanova on Monday and the loss to the Wildcats earlier in the season? There are a lot of little things that you could point out to attempt to explain the difference but the biggest difference was luck. Simple as that. How else can you explain the Big East leader in free throw percentage hitting just 63 percent while the worst free throw shooting team shoots 77 percent? Villanova had an off-night shooting and Syracuse was the beneficiary.
The loss to Pitt on Monday was a “good loss.” This loss to Villanova was unequivocally a bad one. The offense looked completely out of sync and the defense could do nothing to contain the Wildcats’ frontcourt players. Villanova controlled the game, never trailing after taking a 7-6 lead, at the 15:50 mark of the first half.
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