As the sun set on Columbus in the late afternoon of December 2, bars and restaurants began to fill up in anticipation of the Big Ten Championship game.
The football Buckeyes were back in Indy, finally, and they would be getting another shot at humiliating Wisconsin again, the unblemished champions of the B1G West. As luck would have it, the same two schools would also be meeting in Madison for a men's basketball game three hours prior to kickoff.
That matchup wasn't on the marquee. It barely made the undercard. Wisconsin had the 32nd-ranked team in KenPom, while a very thin (75th, woof) Ohio State roster was preparing for a deep roster with Micah Potter nursing a sprained ankle. It would be the Buckeyes first true road game of the season. They were coming off back-to-back losses.
Ohio State swept Wisconsin on Dec 2.
And the Kohl Center is where hoop dreams go to die. With any luck, Indianapolis would be safely out of the range from those evil spirits 330 miles to the northwest.
The Badgers had just dropped a game to Virginia (which shares Wisconsin's commitment to unwatchable basketball) by an extremely Wisconsin-Virginia score of 49-37. Points were going to be tough to come by for Ohio State, but this would be a good learning experience for a program in need of it. All that mattered was that football game, man.
I walked into Branch in the Short North that evening with the sun setting and saw the basketball game wasn't even on. Patrons at the bar had asked for Kansas-Syracuse instead on those screens, and without much protest. This reflected the condition and perception of Ohio State men's basketball in December 2017. Watching Thad Matta's team had become an uninspiring chore over the past five seasons. It was going to take some time to find the energy to volunteer time toward it again.
Each year over the past five, the Buckeyes had unexpected departures - and Matta's exit was accompanied by even more of them than had become customary. JaQuan Lyle and David Bell both transferred, Derek Funderburk was dismissed from the program and Trevor Thompson had parlayed his remaining eligibility in Columbus into a G-league stint in Santa Cruz.
Braxton Beverly had opted out of his commitment to a program in desperate need of a point guard to play at NC State instead. Upper Arlington's Dane Goodwin chose Notre Dame. The exodus had grown so extreme, Ohio State was losing players it never even had.
Even walk-on Jimmy Jent quit the team to focus on school. Michigan graduate and bench fixture Andrew Dakich arrived and emerged as an active and important contributor. This was a piecemeal program in the throes of transitioning into something other than what it had devolved into. It was no mystery that Kansas-Syracuse was on in a High Street bar instead.
However, I still needed to know what was happening. Phone in hand, I deadpanned to Siri: Ohio State basketball score. Siri thought for a second. And then:
LET CARDALE COOK pic.twitter.com/UeFQKFzx8F
— Ramzy Nasrallah (@ramzy) December 2, 2017
It didn't look real. I asked Siri two more times just to be sure.
Correct, Wisconsin basketball in 2017-18 isn't what it normally is. This is the anticipated response from a fan base still untwisting itself from the contortionist poses it put itself in to diminish its outgoing quarterback's record book assault. Wisconsin is barely Wisconsin but you know what - this isn't the Ohio State we're used to either. That became evident in the hours leading to the B1G Championship in Indy.
We never got the chance to properly revel in what they did that evening. Blame football.
They did more than just humiliate a bully on its home floor with a piecemeal roster. Buckeye basketball abandoned its lingering demons in Madison that evening, from the reluctant giant who forced Ohio State to play 4-on-5 for so many seasons to the talented team leader who was unapologetically content with being average.
"Where is everybody?" Chris Holtmann asked a half-empty Kohl Center media room following the win. "There must be a big game." Four hours later the football Buckeyes were conference champions. Two days later, while fans were still smarting over being left out of the College Football Playoff, Holtmann's team turned 20-point deficit to Michigan into a nine-point victory.
A month later, it dismantled No.1 Michigan State by 16 points. And tonight, the Buckeyes took down No.3 Purdue in Mackey Arena.
You're welcome to call it a series of flukes if you'd like. But the word you're looking for is trend. This team isn't going away, and the program is back faster than anyone could have imagined.
The most recent, uninspired editions of this program would get intimidated or give up in a hostile environment or against a formidable opponent. This one is abruptly patient. It doesn't slouch or show demonstrable angst (Jae'Sean Tate can be forgiven for allowing his temper to show tonight after repeatedly getting called for touch fouls while getting mauled without a whistle by Purdue center Goliath Isaac Haas).
This Buckeye team doesn't allow games to get away from it. Instead, when down, it collects data. It plays from behind with an eerie sense of calm. Every crisis is an opportunity. Urgency? Tonight it scored the go-ahead shot with about two seconds remaining. Plenty of time left for a comeback.
When you're actually good, you get lucky bounces
The Buckeyes recently fell behind by double-digits at Madison Square Garden to Minnesota, then finished the game on a 57-29 run. Last weekend Illinois played its best 10 minutes of the season for the first 10 minutes of the game and then didn't score again until the 2nd half. Collect data. Use it. Win.
Tonight in West Lafayette they lingered longer than they should have been allowed to, frustrating the Boilermakers in the comforts of their own raucous home. In the end, they upset the Big Ten's heavy favorite while its center sat on the bench for most of the night with foul trouble, and its starting shooting guard suspended for the evening.
Ohio State beat the No.3 team in the country with a small, sub-heavy lineup, a few match sticks and some duct tape. The Buckeyes haven't won games like this in years.
They had not exceeded expectations since 2010, when they finished atop the conference after being predicted to finish slightly lower than that. Matta got well-deserved Coach of the Year honors for defying the odds, and while he had a couple more title-worthy teams left in his tenure, that was the final time the Buckeyes played better than anyone thought they would.
Holtmann all but clinched that award night. Hell, he might have gotten it a month ago.
It's going to become harder for Ohio State's honeymoon coach as his program emerges from piecemeal transition mode into something everyone expects it to become. But it's hard to imagine circumstances more difficult than the ones the Buckeyes are playing through right now.
We just should have seen it coming back on December 2. They'll have to forgive us for missing it. It won't happen again. Everyone is paying attention now.
