Ohio State freshman big man Daniel Giddens sat down next to sophomore Jae’Sean Tate at the podium for a postgame press conference Sunday following the Buckeyes’ 76-54 win over Mount St. Mary’s. It was the first time Giddens had spoken to the media since arriving in Columbus.
When Giddens leaned forward into the mic to deliver his answers to his first few questions, the 6-foot-10 freshman — who had 11 points and six rebounds in his collegiate debut — gave brief answers, often times speaking in cliches and looking uncomfortable doing so.
Turns out, that was exactly what was happening.
“I’m freaking out right now,” Giddens would later say.
The room filled with reporters erupted in laughter. It turned a hard-to-figure-out-type moment into a funny one. Giddens flashed a smile and loosened up. Tate laughed beside him.
“I’m not going to lie, I was nervous. I’m still nervous,” Giddens said when he was asked to evaluate his performance. “This is new to me."
“I just feel as if our team did a great job. Coach Matta, the coaching staff, executed and scouted this perfectly. For myself personally, I just have to build on what I did today and I just want to make the season a successful one.”
Such is life with such a young, inexperienced group of players. There are surely more moments like Sunday’s to come.
Things were more relaxed from there, though, as Tate and Giddens discussed Ohio State’s impressive performance over the Mountaineers. The Buckeyes looked much better than they did one week earlier in a 10-point exhibition win over Division II Walsh.
The win over Mount St. Mary’s gave Thad Matta his 300th at Ohio State, even though the Buckeyes’ head coach wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen when his team took the floor just two hours prior.
“[Schottenstein Center police officer] Brian and I were walking to the court before the game and I said, ‘Look, I really don’t know what’s going to happen here,’” Matta recalled. “The biggest thing we wanted in this game was to be better defensively than we were last Sunday.”
The Buckeyes were, limiting the visiting Mountaineers to a dismal 21-for-63 shooting performance from the field (33 percent) and holding the opposition to only 7 for 25 from 3-point range. Ohio State was dominant inside, holding an 18-point advantage in points in the paint and it outrebounded Mount St. Mary’s by 28, but did commit 18 turnovers.
Tate led things on offense for the unranked Buckeyes, who put five guys in double figures. The sophomore forward had a game-high 21 points to go along with nine rebounds. Marc Loving and Keita Bates-Diop each recorded double-doubles, with Loving going for 15 points and 11 boards, while Bates-Diop had 10 and 10.
Giddens had his 11 points and fellow freshman JaQuan Lyle also had 12 points and six rebounds.
“[Defense] was our key all throughout the week preparing for them,” Tate said. “We did defensive drills probably 80 percent of practice. I feel like just doing that, it paid off and we got the win.”
It’s one game against a mid-major team which now sits at 0-2, but the Buckeyes showed some signs that they could be an interesting team this season as Matta continues to find out more about his group.
There will be lumps along the way, that was always going to be the case. But Matta called Sunday’s performance “a step in the right direction.”
Ohio State is hoping that continues to be the case as the season progresses.
“With this team, we go day-by-day, not second-by-second,” Matta said.
