If you follow Ohio State men’s basketball or, really college hoops in general, you understand that making the NCAA Tournament is the litmus test of a successful season. Period.
Make the Big Dance and your team did its job. Miss it and, depending on the program, the trapdoor opens under you. Duke is expected to make it every year. Ditto Kentucky, Kansas, Villanova and maybe a dozen other bluebloods known for basketball. Gonzaga needs to make it. And Michigan State. Indiana used to be in that champagne crowd, but severe slippage has occurred in Bloomington, where the Hoosiers are expected to miss for the sixth time in eight years, not counting the COVID season.
Ohio State is in the second-tier group that should make seven of every 10 tournaments, but as I have written many times, OSU is first and foremost a football school, and football schools tend to be hit-and-miss when it comes to advancing deep into March Madness. It’s not the norm to see Alabama, Texas and Notre Dame reach the Elite Eight, much less contend for national championships. Too busy lifting weights.
Buckeyes should make NCAA Tournament more often than not
But the Buckeyes at least should make the tournament more often than not, seldom miss it two years in a row and never miss it three consecutive seasons. Chris Holtmann made the tournament four of seven years, which would have been five of seven if not for COVID canceling the 2020 tourney. But OSU missed the past two years. Last season, they came up just short after Jake Diebler replaced Holtmann in February.
Earning a bid into the 68-team NCAA Tournament is not equivalent to making the 12-team College Football Playoff, which Ohio State is expected to do every season – or else. But it still matters a lot, both financially – each tournament game is worth about $2 million to the Big Ten – and as a way to generate interest in the program.
Creating fan interest is key at Ohio State, and a so-so team that misses the NCAA Tournament makes it too easy for Buckeye Nation to snooze from the end of football season to the spring game, er, “showcase.”
The basketball regular season as a whole is less engaging than football, if only because more games mean less interest in any single contest. Also, a hoops team can lose five in a row and still make the NCAA Tournament. Try that in football and you’re Kent State.
Still, if making even a brief appearance in One Shining Moment is all that matters, then the basketball regular season is exceedingly important. You can’t ho-hum your way to a .500 season and expect Charles Barkley to sing your praises come mid-March.
Ohio State falls apart vs. Northwestern to fall back onto bubble
Which brings us to this year’s Ohio State squad. The Buckeyes absolutely must make the NCAA Tournament. That’s not a threat. More a strong suggestion based in reality. Will they? Entering Thursday’s game against Northwestern at Value City Arena, OSU’s chances looked good. Every major NCAA Tournament bracket projection had them in the field. ESPN had Ohio State as a No. 9 seed; USA Today and CBS had Ohio State as a 10.
Then over 40 minutes of uninspired basketball, the Buckeyes fell apart like a baggie floating in the ocean.
Final: Northwestern 70, Ohio State 49. And it wasn’t even that close. Consider: Only three Buckeyes scored through the first 23 minutes; the first bench points came with 8:57 left in the game; the Wildcats’ bench outscored OSU’s subs 25-8 and NU had 40 points in the paint to OSU’s 22, with the majority of inside scoring coming from the guards. That’s not supposed to happen.
Ohio State wasn’t playing the Boston Celtics. Northwestern is 14-13 and 5-11 in the Big Ten. Ohio State (15-12, 7-9) should have easily taken care of business at home. Instead, the Buckeyes played flat, and that is a nice way to put it. Less compassionate interpretations might say they quit. Or sulked while feeling sorry for themselves. Or forgot that a bad loss late in the season (and this was B-A-D) can move a team from the right to the wrong side of the bubble quicker than you can say, “16 turnovers,” which is how many OSU had against the Celtics, er, ’Cats.
This loss puts Ohio State squarely on the bubble and in jeopardy of missing three straight NCAA Tournaments for the first time since 2001-2004. It also packs pressure onto the remaining four regular-season games, three of which are on the road. The Buckeyes visit the West Coast for a twofer against UCLA and USC, then come home against Nebraska before finishing at Indiana.
Ohio State needs to at least go 2-2 over those four to remain safely in the hunt, because the margin for error is minuscule, and the Buckeyes have lost much of the bracketology goodwill they had built by going 5-3 over the past month.
Ohio State coach Jake Diebler knows the deal. So do the players.
When you play big games this time of year, it’s no secret. This was a big game, Diebler admitted.
Even so, Diebs stressed earlier in the week that he is being careful not to mention the NCAA Tournament before every game. Rather, he wants it to be a constant low hum in the background.
“I don’t think you can pretend stuff doesn’t exist or hide from it, but I don’t need to remind our guys every day that every game we play in is a big game,” Diebler said.
He’s leaving that to the rest of us. And there is no pretending on this one. Thursday was big. A big mess.
“The effort wasn’t what it needs to be,” Diebler said. “It’s not an acceptable way to play this game.”
It needs to improve in a hurry or the season will end not in the NCAA but the NIT. And that is unacceptable.
