Atlas Takes a Vacation

Last year, the Oho State men's basketball team got accustomed to Evan Turner placing the team on his back and see how far he could carry them. Time and time again, Turner was able to bail out an otherwise erratic (at best) offensive team, taking over 30% of shots when he was on the floor and assisting in most of the rest. Hoping to piggyback on one guy is not a terrible strategy when you've got Evan Turner, best college player in America, but how many teams have an Evan Turner?

Well, for about 20 games or so this  season, many Ohio State fans must've thought that they found that player in the form of Jared Sullinger. He was averaging close to 20 points a game, 10 rebounds, and was just your general garden variety unstoppable beast that Ohio State would be able to ride all the way to the Final Four.  But sometimes life has ways of throwing a few tricks at you; as teams have keyed in on Sully, double and even triple teaming him at times, he's become less of an overt factor in games, points-wise. For some, his decreased production may be somewhat alarming, but to soften the blow of the cold, hard asphalt of statistics that is the ground to your sense of well being's face, I've decided to illustrate Sully's point production in his last five games in an adorable MS Paint graph:

Aside from Purdue, a game which OSU lost, Sully's last 5 games have not looked like his best, and when Wisconsin comes in to town, don't be surprised if it is mentioned once or twice in the telecast. Still, what I want to do today is to show that, more than opponents trying to eliminate him from the game by playing "Slap A Sully" or triple teaming him, other external factors have led to these supposed "sub-par" games, and maybe they aren't that sub-par at all. Let's start with the Michigan State game on February 15th.

MIchigan State

One of the first thing that pops out at you in Sully's stat line here is that he accumulated 4 personal fouls against MSU, which greatly limited his playing time. Jared is 3rd on the team in terms of percentage of minutes played (behind Lighty and Diebler), but against Sparty he was only in for 27 minutes. Still, in truth this is probably the worst game Sully has played in the last five; his rebounding was almost nonexistent (he had two) and he also had two of OSU's seven turnovers. Buford having a terrific game and OSU coming out and playing excellent defense in the second half turned this into an OSU win, but I think this game highlights both Sullinger's importance and also the fact that OSU can and has won without him playing his best. In fact, against Indiana, he will barely have to play at all. First, though...

PURDUE

Jared eats his Wheaties and just utterly demolishes Purdue here, in an old fashioned Evan Turner-esque game in which he accounts for 25 of the Buckeyes' 63 points. Unfortunately for OSU, E'Twaun Moore of the Boilermakers does the same thing (but in reverse) and puts up 38 of Purdue's 76. What I think this game, where no other Buckeye scored more than 11 points, showed is that this is not a team built for any one person to dominate. Trust me, I love seeing Jared Sullinger score a billion points and swing his booty around the lane like a 1979 Pontiac LeMans trying to make a hairpin turn, but Sullinger being an inside player means that by nature, his play is most effective when it also opens up scoring opportunities for the rest of the team. If the other guys aren't making open shots as a result of the open looks Sully provides, he can get 30 a night and it won't help at all.

Illinois

This is, in my opinion, the best game Jared has played recently. Most people will remember this game for David Lighty doing pretty much everything on the court, but Sully's "pedestrian" 12 points and 11 rebounds were crucial in that effort, as they were scored after drawing constant double teams all night. Jared also did not have a single turnover during a game in which he played 38 minutes, which is pretty remarkable considering he took 14 shots (although the team as a whole is pretty amazing at hanging on to the ball, against the Illini they only had three in total). The point that I'm getting at here is that when Sullinger is a consistent inside threat, he doesn't need to score 20 plus points a game; as long as Lighty or Diebler or Buford steps up to the plate to make shots, rebounding well and being a legitimate scoring threat will allow him to change the nature of the game.

Indiana

...And sometimes it doesn't matter at all. Against Indiana, Sully had 5 points in 12 minutes of playing time. He only attempted 2 field goals, neither of which he made. In the meantime, Deshaun Thomas had an amazing night and Buford made some key contribution as well. The only real lesson to be gleamed from this game is that Indana is awful and Tom Crean should've been thanking Thad Matta for being nice enough to call off the dogs with about 5 minutes left instead of pouting in front of the visitor's locker room. This game has about as much bearing on Sully's play as a delicious ham sandwich has on Yom Kippur.

Penn State

Basically the Illinois game on crack. Everything that happened on Tuesday is highly skewed by the insane night that Jon Diebler had; there is pretty much no reason to try and establish an inside game when everything that your long range guy is puts up is falling down. Another aspect of Sullinger's game, his intelligence, came into play against the Lions; several times he would drive into the paint for the sole purpose of setting up a pass outside to Craft or Diebler. Stat line: 10 points, 10 rebounds, and 4-8 shooting. And that's all he had to do.

Again, it is somewhat difficult for me and I think a lot of other fans to accept the idea that Jared Sullinger isn't going to go out there and run everything on the court. That's part of basketball culture; the game runs through the best player and if he can dominate, he should. But Gallant Gus Johnson was right: with the 2010-2011 Ohio State Buckeyes, sharing is caring. And that means that players, even incredible ones like Jared Sullinger, must work to create the best shot for whoever happens to find it.

Let teams double Jared. I think he'll be more than happy to pick up his 10 and 10 a game inside the paint if it means Diebler, Buford, Lighty, and the rest all have a shot at glory on the perimeter.