In the “which non-conference opponent do you want to see OSU basketball play” thread, a few people suggested the four-team Ohio State-Xavier-Cincinnati-Dayton mini-tournament. And while I’m all in favor (Go Flyers!), it also made me think of my proposal a few years ago, to hold the ALL-Ohio college basketball tournament.
Yes, I know, there are huge reasons why this will never happen, but here’s the thought, just for fun. If you're a soccer fan, you may have heard of the FA Cup, the annual tournament that includes every single pro and sorta-pro soccer team in England. Early rounds are the low-level dregs playing each other, then with each round as the winners advance, higher and higher level teams get included, until sometimes you get the joy of a sixth-tier team of soccer player/insurance agents taking on mighty Liverpool.
I drew up a bracket three years ago, pre-COVID. If all these schools still have basketball, the 76-team Ohio version would go like this …
R1-2) 64 small colleges play two rounds of games — matchups like Mount Vernon Nazarene vs. Wittenberg and Findlay vs. Owens CC — to get that group down to 16 teams.
R3) Then you bring in eight smaller D-I teams (BG, Toledo, Akron, Kent, Miami, Ohio U, Wright St, Cleveland St), creating a 24-team third round. It’d be fun to see if a Mount Union could knock off Bowling Green, or Walsh could beat Wright State.
R4) Those 12 winners would advance to the 16-team fourth round, where they’d be joined by OSU, Cincy, Dayton and Xavier. Those big 4 would play against the last 4 remaining small-college winners, kinda like a standard exhibition game. The eight MAC and Horizon teams (assuming they had won) would go head-to-head.
R5) That leaves you with 8 teams in the fifth round — barring upsets, each of OSU, Cincy, Dayton and Xavier facing a MAC-Horizon winner.
R6-7) And if those favorites win, we finish the tournament with the four-team showcase a lot of people asked for — OSU-XU-UD-UC. Of course, it’s also possible that a Case Western or Marietta (who made the D3 Final Four this year) goes all Cinderella, which would also be really fun, too.
Anyway, that’s just my little dream tournament. Won’t happen, but fun to think about.
