In case this snuck up on you, the Ohio State basketball team opens up the season Tuesday night against in-state opponent Akron. There’s a lot we simply don’t know about this team with some key departures and additions, so it’ll be interesting to see the team develop.
Losing Duane Washington to the NBA was a hit, but getting Kyle Young and E.J. Liddell back for the season was a boost. Add in some interesting transfers like Cedric Russell, Joey Brunk, and Jamari Wheeler, and there are pieces there for Ohio State to be really good — if everything comes together.
After last season ended, expectations for this team were somewhere in the neighborhood of Final Four potential, but after all the shuffling of rosters across the college basketball landscape, many now see OSU as a fringe top-fifteen team … but that’s why they play the games.
We thought it would be interesting to take a look at ESPN’s BPI (Basketball Power Index) to see what it has to say about Ohio State’s chances of winning every game on its schedule using their “matchup predictor.” We do it for football, and we started to look at it for basketball last season and found it interesting to see how things change from expectations at the beginning of the year, through the season.
So off we go. Here’s a look at what ESPN’s BPI predicts as the percentage possibility of winning each game on the regular-season schedule for Ohio State before all the fun tips off on Tuesday evening.
