Ex-NBA All-Star Names Ohio State As Biggest Threat to Top-Seeded Duke

Wally Szczerbiak is buying the Buckeyes.

Szczerbiak, an NBA All-Star with the Timberwolves in 2002, recently weighed in on Ohio State’s tournament prospects ahead of their first round game Thursday with TCU. And he’s plenty qualified to do so considering he knows a thing or two about the NCAA Tournament.

A two-time First-team All-MAC selection and former conference Player of the Year at Miami (Ohio), Szczerbiak led Miami to the Sweet 16 as a senior in 1999. In the opening round of the tournament Szczerbiak scored 43 points against Washington. In round two, he connected for 24 points.

After 10 NBA seasons, he joined CBS Sports and the MSG Networks as a hoops analyst. On Monday, while appearing on CBS Sports, Szczerbiak put Duke, the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, on upset alert by way of Ohio State’s recent run of success (having won four of their last five games).

“Ohio State. They’re playing really good basketball,” Szczerbiak began when a question was posed as to who is the biggest threat to Duke in the tournament’s East Region. “For most of the season they were in a lot of those quad one games that they needed to kind of get. (They were) hanging around at Michigan, lose by nine, ten.

“And then all of a sudden, the last week of the season when their backs were up against the wall, they played their best basketball.”

Ohio State Needs To First Get By TCU, Duke Needs To Take Care Of Siena

From March 1st through March 12th, Ohio State rattled off wins against (then 8th-ranked) Purdue, Penn State, Indiana and Iowa. Their most recent game was a 71-67 loss to Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals.

“This team has started to kind of find it,” Szczerbiak continued. “… the big key is (forward) Devin Royal is starting to play. And when he plays well — they have good guard play with (John) Mobley and (Bruce) Thornton, obviously. So they’re a team that early on, if they catch Duke a little bit wounded that could maybe pull off a shocking upset.”

Royal is averaging 13.7 points and a team-leading 5.7 rebounds. At 6-foot-6, 220 pounds, the junior forward is a nightmare matchup for opposing teams. With Thornton, a 20-point-per game scorer and Ohio State’s all-time leader in career points, drawing constant attention and Mobley shooting just under 42% from long range, teams can’t afford to double the sturdy Royal.

Considering Duke went mostly unchallenged in the ACC this year (17-1), and that the Big Ten is widely regarded as being a much more difficult road to navigate( this season), It’s not hard to understand why Szczerbiak sees Ohio State, who averages 79 points per game, as fully capable of providing some early round March madness.