The Ohio State men’s basketball team has a better record this year than last, but finds itself in a strikingly similar situation with regard to the NCAA Tournament as the season comes to a close.
Last year, the Buckeyes finished 17-15 overall and 9-11 in the Big Ten, and were listed as the third team left out of the NCAA Tournament. They ended the 2024-25 regular season with a 66-60 loss to the Indiana Hoosiers at Assembly Hall, and then lost to Iowa in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament. Had
they won at Indiana or beaten Iowa, the Buckeyes very well may have been in Dayton the following week for the NCAA Tournament First Four. Alas, they did not – they gifted former Iowa coach Fran McCaffery his final win as head coach, and the Buckeyes were left out of the postseason.
This season, Ohio State is 17-11 overall and 9-8 in the Big Ten, tying their win total overall and in the conference with at least four games to go. They’re currently listed as the first team out of the NCAA Tournament according to the Bracket Matrix, but whiffed on a vital opportunity Wednesday night to move into the tournament field, getting whacked by Iowa, 74-57 in Iowa City. A win over the Hawkeyes would’ve assuredly moved the Buckeyes into the tournament field. Instead, Jake Diebler’s team continues to linger in the gray purgatory that is the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Ohio State has three games remaining:
- Home against Purdue on March 1 (Quad 1)
- Away at Penn State on March 4 (Quad 2)
- Home against Indiana on March 7 (Quad 2)
To put it plainly, Ohio State needs to win all three of its remaining games to feel comfortable on Selection Sunday. That means toppling a Purdue team that is No. 7 in the NET rankings and No. 8 in KenPom, going on the road and taking care of business against last-place Penn State, and returning home to beat fellow bubble-dweller Indiana on senior day and Bruce Thornton bobblehead day.
KenPom is predicting Ohio State to win two of those three games, but is only giving the Buckeyes a 34% chance to beat the Boilermakers this weekend. When combining the likelihood of winning all three games (.34 x .75 x .64), the analytics site gives Ohio State a 16.3% chance to win out and (most likely) make the NCAA Tournament. That would put them at 20-11 overall and 12-8 in the Big Ten before the Big Ten Tournament begins. A Big Ten team being left out after winning 12 conference games is something that (as far as I can find) has never happened.
If you follow the odds and map out a 2-1 finish for Ohio State, they would finish 19-12 overall and 11-9 in the Big Ten heading to Chicago. The KenPom odds of Ohio State winning just their last two games ( .75 x .64) is 48% — basically a coin flip. The Buckeyes would then need to win at least one game in the Big Ten Tournament in Chicago, if not two.
Another college basketball analytics website ran by Bart Torvik (very similar to KenPom) has a feature that simulates where a team will be seeded in the NCAA Tournament bracket if you plug in the hypothetical results of a team’s games that have not been played. Obviously, Torvik cannot predict “bid-stealers” during conference tournament week, so it is just a guess, but when you plug in the following results:
- Loss to Purdue
- Win over Penn State
- Win over Indiana
….. it predicts Ohio State to earn an 11-seed in the NCAA Tournament, placing them in Dayton in the First Four as the third-to-last team included in the field.
If you add a win over 16-seed Northwestern, followed by a loss to 8-seed Iowa in the Big Ten Tournament (current projections, penciling in the higher seed to win), Ohio State would then finish the season 20-13 overall. In that scenario, Torvik has Ohio State being the very last team in the NCAA Tournament, playing in the Dayton First Four.
Perhaps the odds aren’t in Ohio State’s favor, but everything the Buckeyes want is still completely in their control. It starts Sunday afternoon against a Purdue team that hasn’t beaten Ohio State since the 2022-23 season.
