After an unsavory ending in Indianapolis, Ohio State must turn the page in short order.
Only one more game is guaranteed in the Buckeyes’ 2021-22 season, and the result of Friday’s first-round NCAA Tournament matchup with Loyola will go a long way in determining how the campaign is remembered by Ohio State fans.
The Buckeyes won’t have the benefit of carrying much momentum into the Big Dance. Ohio State has lost four of its past five games, including a tournament-opening upset to Penn State in the Big Ten Tournament this past Thursday, and critics will be even less forgiving if the Buckeyes fail to notch at least one more win before year’s end.
“Guys are excited about this opportunity and excited about celebrating the position they’ve been able to put themselves in. Certainly we would’ve liked to finish the season better than what we did, playing better and healthier, for sure,” Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann said Sunday on a Zoom call with members of the media. “But this is obviously, it’s a new season, it’s the postseason, and I think our guys are looking forward to the opportunity to compete on Friday.”
A No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Ohio State takes on a 10th-seeded Rambler program that has tasted plenty of postseason success in recent years. Under former head coach Porter Moser, Loyola reached the Final Four as an 11 seed in 2018, and went to the Sweet 16 just a season ago after knocking off No. 1 seed Illinois in the second round.
In their first season under head coach Drew Valentine, the Ramblers won the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament this past weekend, and opened as a slight favorite over the higher-seeded Buckeyes.
Loyola is currently a 1-point favorite to beat Ohio State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
— Dan Hope (@Dan_Hope) March 14, 2022
“They played in a Final Four and a Sweet 16 and those guys that have been a part of that program were a part of those games, and certainly that coaching staff. So we’ve got tremendous respect for them and their play, and their league’s really good,” Holtmann said. “I think everybody’s well aware of Loyola and Sister Jean from their Final Four run, and we’re well aware of how good they are because they just beat the No. 1 seed in our league last year, in Illinois. So we’ll dive more into them and the specifics, but they have a lot of players returning from teams that have had a tremendous amount of success.”
Ohio State needs no reminder about the possibility of a seed-line upset in the NCAA Tournament. Just last season, the Buckeyes’ No. 2 seed could not save them from a first-round upset loss to Max Abmas and Oral Roberts in overtime, and Holtmann knows unpredictable outcomes are the name of the game in March.
“We’ve had those conversations. We owned last year, we had those conversations in the summer, we talked about it. I think our guys, they’ve talked about it plenty, I think that’s the reality,” Holtmann said. “There’s gonna be plenty of upsets, we know that. That’s March Madness. It’s 40 minutes, there’s gonna be plenty of them. And what we can control is what our preparation and what our focus is heading into Friday.”
Loyola will likely be a popular upset pick on many brackets this week, given Ohio State’s recent downturn and the Ramblers’ well-publicized success in the NCAA Tournament in the past several years. But just because the Buckeyes have struggled as of late doesn’t negate their achievements on the year.
Just a few weeks ago, Ohio State knocked off a No. 4 seed at home in Illinois, and the Buckeyes also boast wins over No. 3 seed Wisconsin and No. 2 seed Duke this season. While the Buckeyes won’t be looking in the past when they travel to Pittsburgh this week, perhaps they can draw those experiences as they look to turn things around during their final postseason run.
“I think you just focus on the next one. Listen, you’re not in this position if you didn’t have really quality play and really quality wins throughout the season. You’re not a 7 seed without doing that, so that’s the reality,” Holtmann said. “I just shared the numbers of where it’s not a given, it’s never been a given, so you want our guys to appreciate that. Our guys knew, they know from past experience, from our first year playing a really good South Dakota State team and then Gonzaga, our second year playing an Iowa State and a Houston team and last year playing Oral Roberts – you’re playing really good teams. And we understand we’re gonna be playing a really good team.”
Getting healthy will be critical to Ohio State’s bottom line. The Buckeyes played without two of their top six players in the Big Ten Tournament loss, as both Kyle Young (concussion protocol) and Zed Key (ankle) sat out in this past week’s game. But now with more than a week between games, the Buckeyes could benefit from the extra time off to return to relative health.
“I think it may (help). Another day is certainly needed, and those guys are making progress, and I’ll make more statements on that when I have more information,” Holtmann said. “But certainly if we were going to play in the First Four tomorrow night, it wouldn’t look good for our group.”
No matter what’s happened so far this season, the most important – and memorable – contests have yet to be played, which might be good news for a Buckeye team that wants to finish things out on a higher note and gain some redemption in the process.
“It’s a party that not everybody gets an invitation to, and we recognize that,” Holtmann said. “I’m happy for our guys that we get to play meaningful games here in March, and they’ve certainly earned the right.”
