Saturday was a banner day for Ohio State sports against That Team Up North. As the Ohio State athletic department itself pointed out, the Buckeyes got victories against Michigan in men's hockey, men's gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and of course, an unexpected upset road win in men's basketball.
That's a pretty good 24 hours of work, but it was made sweeter by the fact that the opponent was the University of Michigan, one half of the greatest rivalry in sports. And while most of those wins on Saturday came in non-revenue sports, the idea that football has some kind of monopoly on the Michigan rivalry is ridiculous; I'd be happy if the Buckeyes beat the Wolverines in handstand shuffleboard.
That kind of sentiment is shared, I'm sure, by virtually everyone reading this, and it's what makes the rivalry so great. It's a shared experience among millions of people, and it's applicable to pretty much any sporting situation in which Ohio State and Michigan face off.
Which is why it's so frustrating that their basketball teams have played so rarely as of late. It's not the fault of either school, in that they are mostly beholden to the whims of Big Ten scheduling, which doesn't account for rivalry games in its schedule rotation. The addition of a 14th team in the Big Ten has made this even more difficult, as home-and-home series versus individual teams are on a rotational basis.
Last night showed perfectly why this is an issue for the Ohio State basketball program: it was a great game.
It's easy to be exceedingly negative about the basketball team this year, and even easier to criticize players like Marc Loving for their overall effort. Personally I was hoping to be able to let my eyes glaze over and think of what I wanted for dinner for about an hour and a half. But it didn't work out that way.
Instead, Marc Loving had a good game, the team played the second half with a ton of energy, destroyed Michigan on the glass, and they were able to somehow decently defend a good three-point shooting team en route to a very nice road win.
It was an entertaining night in a great atmosphere, and it was exactly the kind of platform that Thad Matta and company need to advertise the men's basketball team.
And no, not every regular season game is going to turn out like this (itself a tournament game):
But the Michigan rivalry is an important selling point for anyone interested in either program. Matta, pointedly, needs to use these games as an incentive for the Luke Kennards of the world who might be thinking of going out of state.
By itself, the emotional impact of the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry won't restore both programs to where they were just a few short years ago, but it will help. To that end, the Big Ten needs to start placing an emphasis on natural rivalry games in its scheduling, and both schools need to engage in the kind of fanaticism with their hoops rivals as they do in football.
