Roddy Gayle leads the way: 5 takeaways from Ohio State's win against West Virginia
CLEVELAND – There’s a look you sometimes just don’t mess with.
Roddy Gayle Jr. is a pretty laid-back type of guy. It’s a personality that belies his occasionally high-flying game on the court, one that has turned him into one of the Big Ten’s biggest breakout players in his second season at Ohio State. At times, coach Chris Holtmann said Gayle’s disposition is one where he’s snapped his fingers at the guard, imploring him to elevate his outward level of intensity.
There was none of that Saturday night inside Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in the final game of the Legends of Basketball Showcase. No speeches, no directives, no finger snapping, nothing.
Gayle had the look that said it all, and against West Virginia it led to a career-high 32 points to lead the Buckeyes to a 78-75 overtime win.
“You don’t touch the guys that have that look,” Holtmann said. “It’s like a pitcher throwing a no-hitter. Keep your distance. Let them roll. Let them stay in that flow.
“I probably said two words to Roddy the whole game.”
There were plenty of other areas of the game to address. Ohio State led 24-10 with 7:59 left in the first half, missed 11 straight shots as West Virginia switched to a zone, led 61-53 with 5:13 to play and still found itself playing after regulation. Even there, the Buckeyes built a 78-73 lead with 1:19 to play and had to hold on for the final 79 seconds to emerge with the win.
Gayle was the exception. Limited with two first-half fouls, he scored 20 points during the second half, was 7 for 7 from the free-throw line and had three assists with no turnovers. Then in overtime, Gayle hit a 3-pointer and assisted on Ohio State’s other three made field goals during the extra five minutes.
The final line: 32 points on 11-for-21 shooting, seven rebounds, six assists, one steal and three turnovers, two of which were in overtime.
“It would be selfish of me to take all the (credit) personally,” Gayle said. “I want to thank my teammates for giving me that confidence and looking for me, especially Jamison (Battle) finding me on open looks.”
Battle finished second to Gayle with 17 points, shaking off a scary-looking ankle injury during the opening minutes of the game to go 5 for 11 from 3. In overtime, it was Battle who opened the scoring with a 3-pointer, and two possessions later Gayle followed suit to set the tone.
Gayle’s previous career scoring high was 23 points, a mark he hit in a win against Alabama in the Emerald Coast Classic. In Ohio State’s final game before a four-day break for Christmas, Gayle had a season-low 4 points on 1-of-5 shooting and had four turnovers.
This was decidedly not that.
“It’s tough to get him rattled at any moment,” Holtmann said. “He’s always been that way. He’s got a disposition about him where sometimes you’re like, ‘Let’s go, Roddy.’ It’s just how he is as a player. I love that about him. In a game like this, you kind of need it because he’s really steady.”
Here are four other takeaways from Ohio State’s win against West Virginia in front of 12,211 fans.
Final play of regulation doesn’t go to plan
Although Ohio State only trailed for 52 seconds in a game that featured just one lead change, the Buckeyes found themselves tied with the Mountaineers at 64 after Pat Suemnick scored on a pick-and-roll with 29 seconds left. The Buckeyes called timeout with 18.3 seconds left and drew up a final play to try and win the game.
It ended with Gayle getting a halfway decent look from the right side of the floor near the baseline that did not fall. Both Holtmann and Gayle said the Buckeyes were trying to run an action that they’d successfully executed earlier in the half.
“They went zone to man and we had a bit of an isolation there that we were going to run that we had scored a layup on earlier,” Holtmann said. “We thought they would stay zone and they went man. At that point your player needs to make a play in space. I loved the ball being in Roddy’s hands. He just bobbled it. He just fumbled it a little bit.”
Gayle said the plan was for Bruce Thornton to have the ball but the Mountaineers blew that up.
“We tried to get in our set but West Virginia was denying Bruce’s catch,” he said. “We wanted the ball in Bruce’s hands and run a play similar to what was giving us success in the second half but they played it perfectly. They denied Bruce’s catch and then we were all in sort of a scramble. Then they matched up at the last minute, which kind of threw us off a little. We got a shot on rim and that’s all we can hope for.”
Ohio State gets mixed production from multiple players
Aside from Gayle’s 32, Battle’s 17 and Thornton’s 11, Ohio State didn’t get a lot of scoring from many other guys. First-year wing Scotty Middleton went 1 for 8 from the floor to finish with 3 points while fifth-year guard Dale Bonner missed all six of his shot attempts to finish scoreless in a homecoming game for the Shaker Heights product.
It continues a recent rough run of production for the two. In his last three games, Middleton is 1 for 16 from the floor (6.3%). In his last four games, Bonner is 8 for 30 (26.7%) from the floor and 1 for 14 (7.1%) from 3.
Holtmann didn’t mention either by name, but in discussing Gayle’s game he mentioned a few players who are struggling offensively but are contributing in other ways.
“The challenge for coaches is when a guy who’s a good player is starting to question himself in the midst of a game,” Holtmann said. “How do you get him (confident and) keep him confident, because he’s a good, talented player who’s struggling. You really talk about him doing other things well and play to your strengths. Lose yourself in helping the team and hopefully your offense will come around and we had a couple guys who were struggling early that did that.”
Starting forward Evan Mahaffey missed the two shots he took, one of which was an ill-advised 3-pointer, and finished with a team-high four turnovers. He also grabbed a career-high seven rebounds and had two steals.
“A guy that you may never know impacted the game as much as he did was Evan,” Gayle said. “I want to give Evan his props. He battled down there on the boards. Big thanks to Evan. He saved a lot of my mistakes.”
Zone defense gives Ohio State problems again
It’s not a surprise that in preparing for Ohio State, West Virginia interim coach Josh Eilert said he watched what Penn State did to the Buckeyes on Dec. 9. That’s why, with Ohio State ahead 24-10, he switched to a zone defense.
“We’ve used zone throughout the course of the non-conference stretch to change the game,” he said.” We’ve tried to get creative with how we utilize the zone. But watching the Penn State game, coming down from behind 18 and finding a way to win, using that zone was certainly one of the reasons why we went to it early and often.”
It was effective, especially early. The Buckeyes were 2 for 15 from 3 during the first half (13.3%), bringing back memories of their collapse at the Bryce Jordan Center as well as their 1-for-15 effort in a win against UCLA on Dec. 16. But Ohio State shot better as the game wore on, going 6 for 16 (37.5%) during the second half and 3 for 3 in overtime.
It added up to 11 for 34 (32.4%), Ohio State’s fifth-lowest 3-point shooting percentage through the first 13 games.
“In the past when we have played zone we’ve kind of scrambled,” Battle said. “Penn State, we struggled in the second half of that game. It’s staying present in that moment and understanding we’ve got to make the right plays. If we don’t, it is what it is. That’s what we did in the second half. The ball was flowing and moving inside and we were getting high-lows. That’s where we can attack zones.”
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Hot start to overtime propels Ohio State to win
The script was easy enough to follow. Although West Virginia had trailed for nearly the entire game, when the Mountaineers managed to force overtime it was clear they had a little momentum on their side.
Then Battle hit a 3-pointer on the first possession of the game, with Gayle and Thornton quickly following suit.
“There’s a momentum shift when a team’s been down the whole game and then they tie it in overtime,” Holtmann said. “You’re always concerned about that. We just stressed aggressiveness. We really wanted to get the tip and being really aggressive coming out of overtime. I thought our guys were aggressive, yeah.”
It underscored a point that Battle repeatedly referenced during the postgame press conference: this team continues to preach not dwelling on mistakes and moving on from the next play. It’s still a work in progress, the fifth-year forward said, but Battle said he considers it a strength of this team.
“I’m trying to make sure that guys don’t dwell on the past,” he said. “You can’t change the past. That’s something we can keep getting better at, but to say we were bad at it or weren’t good at it, I don’t think that’s the case but I think we’re consistently getting better at it and that’s something that is going to help us along the way.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Roddy Gayle pushes Ohio State past West Virginia: 5 takeaways
