No one is satisfied with moral victories.
I've seen the reactions on social media and message boards numerous times. Fans are sick of close losses to good teams. Jake Diebler himself has said there are no moral victories. The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee isn't going to count moral victories.
Ohio State hung tough at No. 15 Michigan State without the second and third best players on its roster, Devin Royal and John Mobley Jr., who were out with illness and a hand injury. Brandon Noel, the Buckeyes' sixth or seventh-best player, depending on one's view, has been out for months with a broken foot. Bruce Thornton played all 40 minutes and scored 32 points while OSU squeezed every ounce of defensive effort it could from its short-handed roster in a 66-60 loss.
But all those facts, those things to admire about Ohio State's performance, they mean nothing in the grand scheme. It's just yet another tick in the loss column, not in the bad loss column, but in the ever-expanding "could have been a signature win but the Buckeyes came up a few points short down the stretch in a loss to a good team" column. They've checked that column far too many times in the past four years.
Those same four years overlap with Thornton's decorated Ohio State career. I've been shooting this dead horse with intercontinental ballistic missiles for the past several weeks, but it'd be an outright tragedy to see the man destined to become the No. 1 scorer in school history leave without a single Big Dance.
The good news is that the Buckeyes are still in the bubble hunt. The bad news is that two more moral victories could end that hunt. As the legendary Dan Hope and I hit the road to cover the NFL Scouting Combine on Tuesday, I'm penning this Buckeyetology a day early to log where Ohio State stands as it relates to the NCAA Tournament entering the final two weeks of the regular season.
Let's break it down.
NCAA Tournament Outlook
When I first picked up my pen (opened my laptop) to write this weekly feature, my angle was that Ohio State needed a signature win and was running out of time to get one. But signature isn't the right word, really. A victory at Iowa is exactly what the Buckeyes need right now, but one can't call that a signature win. The Hawkeyes aren't even ranked.
| Overall Record | 17-10 |
| Home | 11-3 |
| Road | 4-5 |
| NET Ranking | 37th |
| Q1 Record | 0-9 |
| Q2 Record | 7-1 |
So let's toss the semantics and my brain's overwhelming need to create an attention-grabbing story hook aside. Bluntly, what the Buckeyes need are Quad 1 wins. Those are determined by the NCAA's NET rankings. A top-30 team at home, a top-50 team at a neutral site and a top-75 team on the road are considered Quad 1 opponents. I don't explain that enough here for something that's not common knowledge.
Ohio State is 0-9 in Quad 1 games right now. Take your pick of bubble teams that the Buckeyes are competing against; they have Quad 1 victories. The last four teams in according to the Bracket Matrix – an aggregate of 112 expert bracket predictions – are Missouri, Santa Clara, TCU and New Mexico. Each of them has a Quad 1 victory, even Santa Clara, which plays in the WCC. Missouri has four.
Two Quad 1 opportunities are set at the Buckeyes' feet this week: at Iowa (28th in the NET) and a home tilt with No. 8 Purdue (sixth). Two vanquished opponents can help their case for the NCAA Tournament by moving up in the NET rankings: Wisconsin if it jumps from 32nd to 30th, and Northwestern if it jumps from 79th to 75th.
Ohio State is the second team out in the matrix, but the first team out is USC, which the Buckeyes beat head-to-head, so effectively, they are the first team out. ESPN's Joe Lunardi has OSU ahead of the Trojans as his first team out. Ohio State is the second team out behind VCU according to CBS Sports.
The Buckeyes have a higher NET ranking than each of the teams listed ahead of them on the bubble so far in this article. Those Quad 1 wins are the missing link. Scooping one up this week is necessary, unless a big run in the Big Ten Tournament is on the horizon. Speaking of:
| Team | Conference Record | Overall Record |
|---|---|---|
| Michigan | 15–1 | 25–2 |
| Illinois | 13–4 | 22–6 |
| Nebraska | 12–4 | 23–4 |
| Purdue | 12–4 | 22–5 |
| Michigan State | 12–4 | 22–5 |
| Wisconsin | 11–5 | 19–8 |
| UCLA | 10–6 | 18–9 |
| Iowa | 9–7 | 19–8 |
| Ohio State | 9–7 | 17–10 |
| Indiana | 8–8 | 17–10 |
| USC | 7–9 | 18–9 |
| Minnesota | 6–10 | 13–14 |
| Washington | 5–11 | 13–14 |
| Maryland | 4–12 | 11–16 |
| Rutgers | 4–12 | 11–16 |
| Northwestern | 3–13 | 11–16 |
| Oregon | 3–13 | 10–17 |
| Penn State | 2–15 | 11–17 |
Big Ten Outlook
Ohio State's matchup at Iowa on Wednesday carries more than just NCAA Tournament implications: The winner of that game will take control of the No. 8 spot in the conference standings, the last spot that gets a double-bye through the first two rounds of the Big Ten Tournament.
Indiana trails the Buckeyes and Hawkeyes by one game for that coveted eighth spot, while UCLA is just one game ahead. A win over Iowa would give Ohio State a head-to-head victory against the Bruins and Hawkeyes, with OSU and the Hoosiers facing each other in their regular-season finale on March 7. Owning those tiebreakers could make the difference for a free entry to the third round.
A first-round bye is already secure for Ohio State, being five games ahead of that cut line with four games to play.
The top four teams in the conference get a triple-bye through to the quarterfinals. Michigan is 2.5 games clear of anyone in the conference, with Illinois, Nebraska, Purdue, Michigan State and Wisconsin all within 1.5 games of each other in the battle for seeds two through six. The Buckeyes are all but out of contention for a triple-bye, currently three games back of fourth place.
