#739/740 ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* Over 156 Points – Oral Roberts vs Ohio State, Friday at 3 PM ET - This one should definitely be a high scoring game. Oral Roberts ranks 13th nationally in scoring averaging 82 PPG on the season. They love to play fast ranking 47th nationally in tempo. The Golden Eagles are a great 3-point shooting team (11th nationally) hitting almost 40% and the are the best FT shooting team in the country at 83%. Ohio State ranks 4th nationally in offensive efficiency and will be by far the best offense ORU has seen this season. There are some very solid offensive teams in the Summit League, but none ranked inside the top 40 in the country. Even with that, the Eagles allowed 75 PPG in conference play. The 3 top offensive teams in the Summit are South Dakota State, South Dakota, and this ORU team. In their 4 games vs SDSU & South Dakota the totaled 189, 178, 175, and 170 points. ORU’s defense ranks 285th nationally in defensive efficiency and the Buckeyes have not seen a defense this leaky in a LONG time. For comparison’s sake, the worst defensive teams in the Big 10 this season were the Buckeyes (79th nationally), followed by Minnesota (51st), Iowa (50th), and Penn State (49th). OSU averaged 77 PPG in their games vs those 3 opponents and they are all FAR superior defensively to this Oral Roberts team. The Eagles played 5 games this season vs tournament teams (Missouri, Oklahoma St, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Wichita St) and allowed an average of 85 PPG in those games and all 5 opponents were ranked outside the top 30 nationally in offensive efficiency (OSU is 4th as we mentioned above). The Buckeyes weakness is definitely their defense which was last in the conference this year in efficiency. They also are not great at defending the arc (191st nationally) which will be a problem here vs a great 3 point shooting team. OSU’s tempo numbers aren’t overly fast, however, they have no problem playing fast and did so when facing the up tempo teams in the Big 10. Versus the 4 Big 10 teams ranked inside the top 100 in tempo, OSU averaged 152 PPG in those contests and remember all of those teams have much better defenses than Oral Roberts. OSU get’s to at LEAST the mid 80’s here and we have no doubt Oral Roberts will top 70. Take the OVER.