Good players can usually get away with jabbing at their coach throughout the course of the season. Great players, however, typically get away with anything and everything because they know their coach can’t afford to take them off the court.
Enter Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell. With his team clinging to a 73-70 lead in overtime against VCU and five seconds yet to tick off the Moda Center clock, the superstar freshman strolled to the free-throw line with his mouth running at full speed.
Was Russell, a player who’s mainly kept his cool both in victory and defeat this season, talking some smack to the Rams because he knew the game was over if he could sink at least one of his free throws?
“Nah, I was talking to coach,” Russell said. “He told me to get one. I told him I had to get two. That was it.”
The freshman said that last part with a wry smile on his face, because not only did he make two free throws to put the finishing touches on his team’s 75-72 victory in the second round, he was masterful once again for Ohio State.
Russell’s game-high 28 points pushed him ahead of Buckeye great Michael Redd on the program’s freshman scoring list with 666 points. Perhaps more impressive, though, is how he led Ohio State to victory despite the Rams throwing literally everything they had at him.
“You know, he’s a good player,” VCU guard JeQuan Lewis said. “He just stayed aggressive, took his team to victory.”
VCU coach Shaka Smart told Lewis and company to double-team Russell whenever he got the ball on a handoff or in a high pick-and-roll situation, something Big Ten teams started doing in conference play.
It worked a few times, but Russell either found his teammates out of the trap for scoring chances or did what he could to get his points.
They tried anything they could to stop him, but he didn’t care. He just kept playing his game.
“I mean, it sounds simple, but I just passed,” Russell said. “My teammates stepped up, Keita Bates was huge. I made the right pass then they made the right pass from there. They made it easier on me.”
Keita Bates-Diop did bury two huge 3-pointers in the game to help buoy Ohio State in a tightly contested battle. Shannon Scott notched 10 assists as well, making the right pass after Russell found him out of a trap. But whenever Russell had a flicker of daylight, he was looking to score and often did.
"We let him get free," Smart said of Russell. "He's a good player."
Russell scored 10 points during a 16-5 Ohio State scoring run to close out the first half and keep the Buckeyes within striking distance, nailing two 3-pointers along the way. He made two more bombs in the second half, shots that looked like bad looks — but not for Russell.
“He’s shown throughout the course of the year, he can get kind of rolling,” Thad Matta said of his star. “Sometimes he wants to get a feel early on for how teams are trying to guard certain situations. To his credit, he’s very good at figuring it out.”
Russell again proved that true Thursday, scoring 16 of his 28 points in the second half and overtime to allow his team to live another day. He finished 10-of-20 from the field and 4-of-7 from deep while grabbing six rebounds.
It was a performance we’ve grown accustomed to seeing from Russell, who even fought through a cut above hi left eye sustained from an elbow by Doug Brooks that forced the Ohio State training staff into action to keep the star on the court.
Thanks to an extended official review of the play that resulted in a Flagrant-1 on Brooks, Russell didn’t miss a second.
Russell said he was headed for stitches after the game to close up the wound, but his game didn’t suffer down the stretch because of it. After all, Ohio State wouldn’t have survived if it did.
“The other thing I would say about D’Angelo is he’s a winner,” Matta said. “The kid loves to win. He’s going to do whatever he can to win basketball games.”
If Matta wants to the chance to toss some banter back-and-forth with his superstar at the end of Ohio State's next game, Russell’s going to have to be just as good, if not better with 2nd-seed Arizona ready and waiting Saturday.
Luckily for Ohio State, Russell was primed and ready for his NCAA Tournament debut and he didn’t disappoint.
“I mean, I watched this my whole life,” Russell said. “Just knowing that a lot of great teams go down, a lot of underdogs achieve, just with the mentality that anything can happen. Coach has been preaching it for weeks now, that anything can happen. I mean, there’s been games on today where it messed up everybody’s bracket. Just keep that mentality. It feels great to be here with success for the next round.”
