Bobcats Basketball Bits

Ohio men's basketball played its first regular season game Friday night, a 101-72 win over DII Ohio Valley. Here are some of my thoughts:

- The Bobcats must continue to find a way to get Tommy Freeman open from downtown. He was the MAC's most accurate three-point shooter last season. Freeman sunk six of his 10 three-point attempts to net all 18 of his points.

- D.J. Cooper reminds me of Akron's Humpty Hitchens. The freshman PG Cooper scored 13 points, had 12 assists, seven rebounds and three steals. He only had three turnovers in this game but in the last against Ashland he gave the ball away eight times. Hitchens struggled with ball control early in 2008 but got better in that aspect as last season progressed. This season, he is on the preseason All-MAC team.

- The big men need to work on their stroke from the stripe. The team as a whole hit just 48.5% of their free throws. Of the bigs, DeVaughn Washington was 5-10, Reggie Keely was 3-6, Ivo Baltic was 4-9 and KVK 0-2. These guys are going to draw contact all year and Ohio is going to have problems if it can't make even half of its tries from the line.

- Ivo Baltic has a ton of potential. He is a long, agile forward and showed scoring ability with 20 points. Take it with a grain of salt, as Ohio Valley was a small team, but Baltic looked the best of all of Ohio's big guys, going strong to the hoop.

- Best of luck to freshman Marquis Horne, who has left the team due to personal reasons.

- Middle Tennessee State will be Ohio's first DI opponent tomorrow and a much greater litmus test of this team's ability. The Blue Raiders were picked to finish third in the Sun Belt's East Division in the conference preseason poll.

More to follow soon...