Big Ten basketball is over for No. 11 Ohio State women’s basketball. The Buckeyes headed to Indianapolis for the 2026 Big Ten Tournament, won two games, and fell to the No. 1-seeded UCLA Bruins in the semifinals. Looming over the first batch of postseason basketball was where Ohio State would play next. Here is how it lines up for head coach Kevin McGuff’s side and playing NCAA Tournament games in Columbus, Ohio.
Saturday night, Ohio State men’s basketball flashed the March Madness logo on the screen
after its 91-78 victory over the Indiana Hoosiers, in hopes that the win and recent form got the side into the NCAA Tournament. For the women’s side, it is much more of a guarantee, and that logo on the video board is practice for what looks like March Madness games played in Ohio’s capital for the fourth season in a row.
On the final day of the Big Ten regular season, the NCAA Tournament committee revealed its final top-16 ranking before the official tournament bracket comes out on March 15 at 8:00 p.m. ET, on ESPN. This ranking shows the 16 teams that the committee thinks will get a No. 1 through No. 4 seed, all coming with the right to host the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Here is who it chose:
- UConn
- UCLA
- South Carolina
- Texas
- Vanderbilt
- Iowa
- LSU
- Michigan
- Louisville
- Duke
- TCU
- Oklahoma
- Maryland
- Michigan State
- Minnesota
- Ohio State
The full top-16 is important to see when looking at the Buckeyes’ chances of hosting. Since the committee released the rankings, the three teams ahead of them, all Big Ten competition, struggled. The Maryland Terrapins ended the regular season with an 18-point loss to the Michigan Wolverines the day before the rankings were released. Then, in head coach Maryland Frese’s first game of the Big Ten Tournament, got upset by the No. 11-seeded Oregon Ducks.
Next up are the Michigan State Spartans, whom the Buckeyes humbled in East Lansing, Michigan, within a couple of hours of the rankings release. Ohio State won 87-68, and that scoreline was actually closer than the game was in the first half, when the Buckeyes had a 30-point advantage. That was immediate good news that got even better for the Scarlet and Gray in the Big Ten Tournament when the No. 7-ranked Spartans lost to the No. 10 Illinois Fighting Illini in the second round of games.
Minnesota was directly in front of Ohio State, despite the Golden Gophers’ place in the top 10 of the NET rankings for much of the conference season. The NCAA and Associated Press voters seem reluctant to give too much credit to Minnesota, despite their No. 4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament. That bodes well for Ohio State because the Buckeyes upset the Gophers 60-55 in the quarterfinals on Friday after losing to them by 13 points in Minneapolis on Feb. 18.
All of that means that the Buckeyes have outplayed all of the Big Ten teams directly in front of them when it counted the most. Even though Ohio State lost to the UCLA Bruins in the Big Ten semifinal, head coach Cori Close’s side is the projected overall No. 2 seed in March Madness, and the Buckeyes competed with them for three quarters on Saturday.
Now there is the conversation around what seed the Buckeyes should have when the bracket is announced in one week. Since the end of the season, the bracketologists are high on McGuff’s side. Here is where they have Ohio State, the regional location should the Buckeyes win their first two games, plus links to all of the brackets.
- The IX Sports: No. 3 seed (Sacramento 2)
- HerHoopStats: No. 3 seed (Fort Worth 3)
- ESPN: No. 3 seed (Fort Worth 3)
- CBS Sports: No. 3 seed (Fort Worth 1)
There is definitely a theme, but most importantly, the lack of travel plans needed for fans of the Buckeyes. Ohio State’s guarantee of a spot in the NCAA Tournament now includes a strong possibility of hosting, unless the NCAA Tournament gets creative, rebellious, or has not watched any basketball.
Hosting does not mean an easier road to a Sweet Sixteen or Elite Eight appearance, as the Buckeyes showed over the last two seasons. The Buckeyes have a reputation lately of getting to this point and coming away with none of the home-court advantage expected. In the 2024 Second Round, the Duke Blue Devils defeated the Buckeyes. A year later, it was the Tennessee Volunteers. On each of the brackets above, the Buckeyes face the No. 6 seed. In the previous two tournaments, Duke and Tennessee were No. 7 and No. 5 seeds, respectively.
After the Saturday defeat to the UCLA Bruins, Ohio State’s leader put it best for the Buckeyes when she told The Columbus Dispatch’s Brianna Mac Kay that Ohio State “has to get out of Columbus.” Ohio State fans are hard-pressed to disagree.
