Ohio will enter Saturday’s contest on the road against Buffalo with two major question marks: the statuses of junior point guard Stevie Taylor and senior forward T.J. Hall, which likely won’t be determined until the day of the game.
Taylor left with 6:50 remaining in Wednesday’s 82-76 loss against Toledo, suffering a deep calf contusion. Ohio coach Jim Christian said that Taylor’s status is day-to-day.
Hall didn’t travel with the team to Toledo because of what Mark LaFrance, assistant director of media relations, tweeted was a “failure to adhere to the team’s academic policy.”
Christian said Hall has responded well and that if he completes what he needs to do on Friday, he’ll make the trip.“We’ll see what happens,” Christian said.
Ohio will need all the bodies it can possibly find to slow down a Buffalo team that has won five of its last six games, including a 75-62 win against Miami on Wednesday.
The Bulls have recently vaulted themselves into a three-way tie for second in the Mid-American Conference, with much of the credit for the run going to first team all-MAC forward Javon McCrea.
McCrea averages a double-double, scoring 18.3 points per game along with a league-high 10.2 rebounds. The 6-foot-7 senior ranks among the top three in the MAC in blocked shots (2.5 per game) and field goal percentage (58.9 percent).
To Christian, McCrea is one of the most impressive players in the conference.
“McCrea is still going to get the ball around the basket,” Christian said. “He is a ton to handle. He has the best hands of any player I’ve ever seen. He’s a great rebounder, he’s a great scorer, he’s a physical presence every time down the floor.”
Ohio senior forward Jon Smith, who will work with junior forward Maurice Ndour to guard McCrea, echoed some of Christian’s claims and said that much of Ohio’s defensive game plan revolves around equalizing McCrea.
“He’s really a good player,” Smith said. “He’s really big and really solid. … But I think we’ve got a lot of length to challenge him, and I think we’ve got a lot of other things we’re going to game plan around him.”
Part of that plan will be limiting McCrea and the Bulls’ effectiveness on the glass, as Buffalo leads the MAC with 37.6 rebounds per game and have averaged 12.7 of the offensive variety in each contest.
Toledo grabbed 16 offensive boards and outrebounded the Bobcats by a 39-31 margin on Wednesday.
Ndour wouldn’t go as far as to say that Ohio was “abused” on the glass, but he said the Bobcats can definitely find room for improvement against Buffalo.
“We just didn’t come out with energy,” Ndour said. “(You have to) keep on playing all the time. It’s competing, in a sense, because they’re not going to stop playing, so you have to match their energy level.”
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