Ohio State's Evan Turner

Forget about asking what Thad Matta had in mind when he sent his Ohio State Buckeyes out on the court, down three with 12 seconds left. After an awkward, bumbling sequence that included two no-chance trey attempts by star Evan Turner, the first question is what was Matta doodling on his clipboard in the huddle, because it obviously wasn’t an offensive play.

In a close game all the way through, the 2-seed Buckeyes went up by one on 6-seed Tennessee when Turner dropped a Raftery-certified “ONIONS!” triple with 41 seconds left. Tennessee came right back to regain the lead on a Brian “Big Baby” Williams tip-in, and after Turner missed on a driving layup, Ohio State turned it over when Kyle Madsen‘s attempted pass back to Turner got intercepted.

Bobby Maze added two free throws for the Vols, so down three, Matta called timeout and was allegedly drawing up a play on the clipboard. As expected, Turner brought the ball up, but then chaos ensued: Turner (31 pts, 7 rebs, 5 asts) ran to the corner and handed off to shooting specialist Jon Diebler, but he seemed surprised to get the ball and hot-potato-ed it right back to Turner, who threw up a prayer that wasn’t answered. Turner then tracked down the rebound, then threw up another wild shot that was blocked clean by J.P. Prince.

The strategy of simply giving it to your best guy and letting him do his thing makes sense on the NBA level, but these are college kids: Was anyone else on Ohio State even semi-prepared to shoot the ball if it had gone to them? Was Turner given any instruction at all? Those stories of the coach looking at the star and saying, “Just make something happen, Hoss” are nice to hear after the fact, but in the moment, you gotta have an actual plan.

* Wayne Chism led Tennessee with 22 points and 11 boards, while Prince had 14 and 6 assists, and Williams added 9 points and 12 boards. Williams Buford was OSU’s only other double-digit scorer with 15.

* What’s up with the trend of mediocre centers costing their team games in this tourney? The kid Hartstock for BYU was just a softy in their loss to Kansas State, Rick Jackson played last night’s Syracuse/Butler game like Tony from Blue Chips, and Madsen made some huge errors today. You don’t even have to look at the NBA to see the American center is an endangered species.

* Funny moment when Maze was at the line in the closing seconds and they showed Tennessee’s bench guys with their arms interlocked and basically praying. Each player was shown either screaming or grinning as Maze made the first FT — then they show one assistant coach who looked like he was on a carnival ride and was about to puke.

* Omar Samhan finished with a respectable 15 points, 9 boards and 2 blocks, but St. Mary’s still got drilled by Baylor. LaceDarius Dunn led the Bears with 23 points.