Buckeyes Lock Up Share of Big Ten Title

On January 12th, Ohio State walked into the locker room at Mackey Arena trailing the Purdue Boilermakers by double digits at the half, well on their way to a 1-4 start in Big Ten Conference play.

Then the Buckeyes, lead by their star Evan Turner rallied to pull off a huge road victory.

At that time...they wouldn't realize just how important that win would be.

Fast forward to Tuesday night's game against the Illinois Fighting Illini and the Buckeyes with a 73-57 victory assured themselves a share of the Big Ten title. Ohio State's third in the past five seasons.

Turner, who may have played his last game at Value City Arena, despite chants of "One More Year" from the crowd, talked about what it took for the Buckeyes.

"All this hard work we put in, we always persevered through tough times," explained Turner. "The stuff we did during the summer, growing as a team and going through all the things we went through, this is a testament to that. It's a great accomplishment. It's great."

The Buckeyes have been a resilient, gritty bunch the entire season with their starting five gutting out games where most of them didn't come off the floor.

So when they finally checked out in the closing seconds of Tuesday's game with the game in hand, it was a rewarding walk to the bench. A walk in which, Jon Diebler hadn't done often this season.

Prior to that walk, Diebler had logged 199 straight minutes of game play and he saved some of his best minutes on Tuesday draining seven 3-pointers in scoring a team-high 21 points.

"The guys had confidence in me," said Diebler. "They were collapsing on ET, Will and Dave and they were driving. It just left open shots for me. I was fortunate to knock them down tonight."

The guys Diebler mentioned also had solid nights as William Buford bucketed 17 points, Turner tallied 16 points and 12 rebounds, and David Lighty contributed 15 points while providing a constant spark.

Illinois was led by Demetri McCamey who scored 18 points. McCamey, a candidate for Big Ten Player of the Year, went to the bench halfway through the first half which lead to a 12-0 Ohio State run. A run in which the Illini would not recover from.

Ohio State will wait for the rest of the Big Ten to play out, a much needed brief break as they get ready for the conference tournament.

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