Ohio State's Best Teams that Missed the NCAA Tournament

Modern era college basketball fans live in a world where a 20-win season doesn’t guarantee their team a trip to the NCAA tournament. It wasn’t that long ago that 20 wins was the college hoops golden ticket. Reaching 20 wins during the regular season was almost a certainty to get a team to the promised land. Expanded schedules have largely changed that and so we entered Friday night’s meeting with the Spartans largely confident that only a win would be enough to push this year's Ohio State squad into the field, despite reaching that 20-win mark.

We were disappointed when Michigan State beat the Bucks by 27 points. Ohio State finishes the regular season and conference tourney at 20-13 (60.6%), which would qualify as one of the better season marks by an OSU team not to make the NCAA tournament in the modern era, assuming nothing weird happens on Selection Sunday.

It almost seems like a birthright to hit 20 wins now for Buckeye fans. Since Thad Matta’s arrival, the team has reached that mark 12 consecutive years from 2004-05 through 2015-16. Even if you count the seasons with vacated wins from the Jim O’Brien era, you have to go back 26 years to count up the last dozen 20-win seasons that preceded the Matta era. That’s less than one every other year and, of course, some of those in the O’Brien era no longer count.

It’s likely that 23 wins (or is it 25?) is the new 20 in college hoops, but for those of us who have followed Ohio State basketball for many years, there’s still a sense of accomplishment about reaching 20, even if it’s simply a holdover from a bygone era. To celebrate when 20 meant more, let’s look back at a few Ohio State teams that hit that number but didn’t reach the NCAA tournament. It is notable that only one of these teams reached the magic number of 20 before the end of the regular season.

2007-2008

Let’s start with the last team to reach 20 wins for the year but not reach the tournament. The 2007-08 Buckeyes featured a starting five of Jamar Butler, Kosta Koufos, Othello Hunter, David Lighty, and Evan Turner. Just a year removed from an appearance in the national championship game, the Buckeyes had to replace significant players such as Greg Oden, Mike Conley, Ron Lewis and others. Still, this was a talented team.

The Buckeyes went just 4-3 to open the 2007-08 season, although two of those losses were to No. 1 North Carolina and No. 16 Butler. The other came against unranked Texas A&M, which overshadowed a win over No. 21 Syracuse.  Ohio State then won eight consecutive games against mostly cupcakes, although one was a rematch with Florida, which had lost a huge chunk of its back-to-back national championship winning roster.

The Buckeyes then had the first of two mid-season hiccups, losing three consecutive road games from Jan. 12-19. It started with a 75-68 loss at Purdue, followed by a 66-60 loss at No. 11 Michigan State, and then a strange mid-season, non-conference game at No. 6 Tennessee, 74-69. After winning five of the next seven games — all in conference — the second hiccup came. The team lost four straight against Michigan (80-70 on the road), No. 11 Wisconsin (58-53), No. 12 Indiana (72-69), and a terrible flop at Minnesota, 71-57. The latter probably undid any goodwill from narrow losses to ranked teams.

Despite finishing the regular season with wins over No. 15 Purdue (80-77) and No. 17 Michigan State (63-54) — both at home — the Buckeyes bowed out in their first B1G tournament game against Sparty, falling 67-60, and were shut out of the big dance with a 19-13 mark, despite several narrow losses against ranked opponents. It was a team that lacked chemistry and, at times, offensive identity, but it was still a collective of highly talented players, who proceeded to win five consecutive games to capture the 2008 NIT championship. They won the first four of those games by double figures before defeating UMass, 92-85, in the title game. That team was too good to miss the NCAA tourney and yet, it did.

Ohio State finished with a 64.9% winning percentage in 2007-08, ending the year 24-13.

1987-1988

Another good Ohio State team that reached 20 wins but didn’t make the tournament also had a long run in the NIT. The 1987-88 team finished the year 20-13 (60.6%) and as the NIT runner-up. It featured a solid starting lineup of center Perry Carter, forwards Jerry Francis and Tony White, and guards Jay Burson and Curtis Wilson. Gary Williams’ Buckeyes had reached the second round of the NCAA tournament the year before, with three of the same starters (Francis, Burson and Wilson). Carter was also an upgrade over John Anderson in the pivot, but Ohio State had lost the incomparable Dennis Hopson.

The 1987-88 team came out of the gate 4-0 before running into a buzzsaw at No. 11 Florida, getting crushed, 102-69. The Buckeyes then lost an 81-80 heartbreaker to Dayton, before winning three of the next four to close non-conference play at 7-3. Ohio State opened the conference with a seven-point loss at No. 10 Purdue and a one-point loss at Wisconsin before beating ranked Iowa and Michigan teams at home and beating Minnesota on the road, 85-76.

But the Buckeyes finished the conference slate on a 6-7 skid, closing the regular season at 16-12. That was a Jekyll-and-Hyde squad that beat No. 2 Purdue, 71-60, and No. 17 Illinois, 64-60. A 78-77 overtime loss to Sparty was a gut punch, but the truth is the team had defensive problems on the road, yielding 118 points at Illinois, 92 at Iowa, and 95 at Michigan.

Then Ohio State started putting it together, and began playing more as a team. The Buckeyes beat Old Dominion, 86-73 to open NIT play, then got wins over Cleveland State (86-80), New Mexico (68-65, in a revenge game against a team they’d lost to in December), and a nail-biter against Colorado State (64-62). The run came up short against UConn, when the Buckeyes fell 72-67 at Madison Square Garden, finishing the season at 20-13.

1962-1963

Going way back to the Fred Taylor era, the 1962-63 team finished the season with a record of 20-4 (83.3%) and tied for first in the Big Ten with a mark of 11-3. It won all 14 of its home games but went only 6-4 on the road. The team featured two returning starters in Doug McDonald and Dick Reasbeck from the NCAA runners-up from the season before, but notably lost Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek. Gary Bradds, Jim Doughty and Dick Ricketts rounded out the starting lineup.

Ohio State rolled off seven straight wins to start the season, including a 76-69 win over No. 3 West Virginia, climbing to No. 2 in the country before falling at Wichita State, 71-54. A 3-2 “skid” over the next five games hampered Ohio State, with one of those losses coming at No. 3 Illinois. That loss would later prove costly. The Buckeyes righted the ship and won 10 consecutive games, but fell in overtime in the season finale at Indiana, 87-85. The Buckeyes were ranked No. 3 entering that game.

The overtime loss against the Hoosiers also cost Ohio State. With a smaller tournament field then, Illinois represented the Big Ten in the 1963 NCAA tourney, reaching the Elite 8 before being upended by Loyola of Chicago. Bradds finished the season as a second-team consensus All-American, including first-team AP honors.

Taylor's 1962-63 team had the best winning percentage by an Ohio State team to not make the dance. 

Those are Ohio State’s other 20-win teams that did not play in the tournament. The 1963 team would easily have made a 64-team field, but succumbed to the numbers game in a 25-team tourney and its tie-breaking loss to Illinois on the road. The 1988 and 2008 teams underachieved just a tad in the regular season, which cost them, but both were loaded with good players and could have advanced past the NCAA tourney’s first weekend if given the chance.

Other noteworthy teams include the 1955-56 team under Floyd Stahl, which finished 16-6 (72.7%). Those Buckeyes finished third in the Big Ten, and didn't qualify for the field, which is just as well, since the entire OSU athletic department was on probation. Woody Hayes had been caught making small personal loans out of his own pocket to players in need. Taylor's 1968-69 and 1969-70 teams each went 17-7 (70.8%), but failed to reach the tournament, finishing tied for second and tied for third in the conference, respectively. His 1971-72 team finished 18-6 (75%), second in the B1G, a year after reaching the Elite 8.

Also notable is that the year following a 20-win season that missed the NCAA tournament, only Matta's 2008-09 team reached the dance the following season. The caveat: Taylor's 1963-64 squad (16-8, 66.7%) was again the Big Ten co-champion and missed out due to the smaller tournament field.