Before Friday’s game with the Wolverines became an instant classic, Ohio State’s Evan Turner made a baseline jumper of Michigan’s Manny Harris and then looked over and eyed former high school teammate Demetri McCamey.

Good friends, better enemies might aptly describe the two star players’ friendly rivalry, which seemed to boil over at times in the Buckeyes’ 88-81 double overtime win in the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament Saturday afternoon.

“It definitely got me going,” Turner said of the talking going on between both teams. “I show emotion but I don’t really get too much into it like that. For them to start running their mouths, they really, really annoyed me.”

The Illini would have most likely secured an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament with a win on Saturday but the Buckeyes used every ounce of their being to stop them and did so by the slimmest of margins.

Turner at times was brilliant, while at others he was frustrated and flustered by Illinois ability to disrupt his game and force him into 10 turnovers, matching his season high.

He did, however, score 31 points with 10 rebounds with 12 of his points coming on a perfect 3-for-3 in overtime.

McCamey had 19 points after halftime but unfortunately for him and Illinois, that is when Ohio State began to play.

The Buckeyes went up 15-7 in the first half before going scoreless from the field for more than six minutes while Illinois began to hit its stride. When OSU finally scored again, it broke a 14-0 run by the Illini.

When the first half was over, Ohio State was down, 37-31, and the game began to take a more extracurricular turn. It appeared Turner had words with the both McCamey and D.J. Richardson.

“They were just running their mouths too much, and that was it,” Turner said. “They were hitting shots and front runners, and they were running them off entirely too much.

“This is the first time they did this. They were yelling and screaming. I felt like they were front-running. They never did it before and then when they got ahead they started talking trash.”

Turner said he and McCamey exchanged some words throughout the game but at halftime he told his former teammate “not to get crazy” because the Illini were getting the best of OSU at that time.

In the second half, it was the Buckeyes who got crazy, especially offensively. After the Illini stretched their lead to 50-39, OSU ran off a 20-0 run.
“The balls just kept going in and out, in and out,” Turner said. “We knew they were going to fall eventually and we were going to get on a run because we hadn’t been on a run the whole game. We were just trying to persevere. We’ve been through tougher times than this, and we knew we were going to come back and win.”

The Buckeyes went up by nine but Illinois knew if it wanted to secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament it would have to battle back and win. They came awfully close.

The Illini spent the last several minutes fighting their way back from the OSU onslaught and eventually, with the help of McCamey, took the lead.

McCamey said after Friday’s win over Wisconsin that he refused to lose to the Buckeyes three times in one season. With a 3-pointer that gave the Illini the lead, 64-62, with just over a minute to play, he was close to fulfilling his prediction.

He would have a chance to be the hero, like Turner was on Friday. After making two free-throws to push his team ahead, McCamey watched Turner again bring the game to a tie with a layup.

McCamey had about three seconds to lead his team to the upset, but instead tried and pass to open Mike Davis under the rim for an easy layup, but time expired.

“I got the ball just like the Indiana play we drew up, and drove it, and I was going to have to take a tough shot,” McCamey said. “I saw there was a little bit of time on the clock and tried to throw it to Mike Davis real quick, but I should have shot it and at least tried to get a shot attempt up.”
He would again get his chance in overtime, this time with more than 16 seconds left, but McCamey again wouldn’t make a play his team needed, when it was needed the most. The Illini again failed to get a shot off in time, sending the game to another five-minute session.

In the second overtime period, the Buckeyes asserted themselves as the favorites. Jon Diebler hit a quick three and OSU spent the rest of the period with a two-score advantage.

Turner, who spent the last five minutes of regulation with four fouls, eventually fouled out of the game. At that point, however, he and his teammates had done enough to secure a victory.

“I knew we were a tougher team and everything we’ve been through,” Turner said of the Buckeyes response to adversity. “I started thinking about the sand pits, all the injuries, we always battled back through that. I knew what type of team we had. I knew what we had was way tougher than what they had, and I definitely wasn’t trying to lose.”