On Thursday, March 11, the Ohio State Buckeyes will start their quest for a Big Ten Championship. This one could come just months after their conference championship in football.
Entering the conference-wide tournament as the No. 7 seed, the Buckeyes have both looked like the best team in the conference and the worst at times.
They’ve amassed both a nine-game win stretch that included wins over two top-ten teams to start the season, and a four-game losing streak during a stretch of losing six of seven in January. With wins over the Big Ten’s best, the Buckeyes will be primed for a deep run in the Big Ten Tourney.
They’ll kick off the madness with a 6:30 p.m. Eastern tipoff against the Purdue Boilermakers, a team they beat by 16 under a month ago, but at the Schott. It can be watched on the Big Ten Network.
However, Ohio State’s real test will come against Michigan State, a team it just lost against in its season finale Sunday. It was Cassius Winston’s 27 points that helped the Spartans to a double-digit victory.
Sparty doesn’t have too many quality wins this season, but they do have Ohio State’s number. If the Buckeyes get by Michigan State, they’ll play a Maryland team which they’ve already downed this season.
Get through those first three games and they’ll be in the tournament final. But all the games will be tough, even the first-round game against the Boilermakers.
That’s the gameplan, and if we’ve seen anything from this Buckeyes team, it’s that, if they play as a team and cohesively, they can beat any college team in the nation.
They’ll need the help to make a deep run in the precursor to the NCAA Tournament, but the run could certainly help their bid, potentially bumping them from a five or six seed to somewhere in the four-seed range.
