It hasn't exactly been a fruitful week for Ohio State basketball.
The Buckeyes first had a shot at a resume-building home win against No. 15 Wisconsin. Despite leading 56-52 entering the final six minutes of play, Ohio State fell 71-60 after being outscored 19-4 down the stretch against the Badgers.
Following that loss, the Buckeyes' second straight, they got what seemed to be a chance to get back on track and break an 11-game road losing streak at Michigan on Monday. They did not.
After taking a four-point lead off a 16-0 run to come back from down 12 points, Ohio State fell victim to another late-game surge as Michigan closed on a 13-4 jaunt to win 73-65.
As a result, Ohio State has gone from solidly in the field of 68 to firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble in just one week.
NCAA Tournament Outlook
Needless to say, Ohio State's tournament standing has worsened since the last edition of Buckeyetology eight days ago.
| Overall Record | 12-5 |
| Home | 8-2 |
| Away | 0-3 |
| NET | 51st |
| Q1 Record | 1-1 |
| Q2 Record | 0-4 |
| Strength of Schedule | 136th |
Perhaps the most followed bracket projection of them all, the "Bracketology" outlook published regularly by ESPN's Joe Lunardi, now has Ohio State as one of the last four teams in the tournament.
CBS Sports bracketologist Jerry Palm also has Ohio State as one of the last four teams in in his projections.
A broader scope places the Buckeyes in a slightly better light. The aggregate of 61 major bracket projections from Bracket Matrix lists OSU as a 10-seed, with an average seeding of 9.68. Twenty of the 61 brackets collected by the matrix now place Ohio State outside the tournament, however, a number that has multiplied tenfold in the past eight days.
A Quadrant 1 loss to Wisconsin didn't hurt the team's standing too bad – other than being a lost chance to improve it – but Michigan knocked the Buckeyes' Quadrant 2 record to 0-4 on the campaign.
Ohio State's NET ranking also fell for the second straight week, going from 47th to 51st nationally and slipping behind one of its Big Ten foes in Iowa. Road record isn't too high up on the list of metrics the NCAA Tournament selection committee evaluates, but the Buckeyes are going to need to win some games in enemy territory at some point if they hope to make the Dance.
If the Buckeyes don't get off the schneid against Penn State this Saturday, the Nittany Lions would become their first Quadrant 3 loss of the season. With much tougher matchups ahead, the home tilt feels like a must-win for Ohio State's tourney ambitions.
Then, once more, the Buckeyes will have a shot at adding a Quadrant 1 win to their resume at Nebraska on Tuesday. The Cornhuskers are 11-1 at home this year including a win over No. 2 Purdue, so a victory in Pinnacle Bank Arena would be an emphatic way to snap OSU's 12-game road losing streak.
Big Ten Outlook
Ohio State's Big Ten record has fallen to 2-4 on the season, placing it in a three-way tie for 11th place in the conference with Michigan and Michigan State. The only team with a worse mark in league play is Rutgers at 1-4, one of the Buckeyes' two Big Ten wins in 2023-24.
Wisconsin sits atop the conference with a 5-1 record, half-a-game ahead of second-place Purdue.
A run at a Big Ten regular-season crown seems almost out of the question at this point. A team with more than five conference losses has taken the title only one time when three teams split it with 14-6 records in 2019-20.
To have a realistic shot at a Big Ten title, Ohio State would need to win 13 of its final 14 games. Even a top-four spot and the coveted double-bye in the Big Ten Tournament seem out of reach at this stage, but a top-10 spot and single-bye seem feasible.
