Category: Buckeyes Wire

Ohio State basketball drops out of Andy Katz’s Power 36

The Ohio State basketball team has been on a slide. So much so that it has dropped out of Andy Katz’s Power 36 poll.

Once thought to be a juggernaut by March Madness’ and the BTN’s Andy Katz, the Ohio State basketball team has now dropped completely out of his Power 36 weekly opinion poll.

To some degree it makes sense. I mean the Buckeyes have dropped four in a row and have yet to win a game in the new decade. They have begun to turn the ball over at an alarming rate, can’t seem to shoot the ball all of a sudden, and have lacked the toughness necessary to compete at a high level in the Big Ten.

It’s a process to say the least.

So okay. But is Ohio State really not one of the 36 best teams in the country? If the rankings are really about the body of work, then there’s still a lot to like outside of the recent pitfalls. The win over Kentucky on a neutral court is going to look better and better, the win over Villanova is nothing to sneeze at, and the schedule has been brutal early.

Regardless, there’s one way to correct the perception building out there about this Ohio State team. It’s to now go out and start winning again. Clearly, there are some things to correct, but don’t worry, things will get better. Or so we hope.

Ohio State Men’s Basketball falls to No. 19 in USA Today Coaches Poll

The Ohio State men’s basketball team fell seven spots, from No. 12 to No. 19, in the USA TODAY Sports men’s basketball coaches poll Monday.

The Ohio State men’s basketball team fell seven spots, from No. 12 to No. 19, in the USA TODAY Sports men’s basketball coaches poll on Monday.

The Buckeyes are in the midst of a four-game losing streak. And while they still have dominant wins over Villanova and a then-healthy North Carolina team, plus a strong win over Kentucky, this current skid has hurt in the eyes of the voters.

The Buckeyes are a very talented team still. And, as our own Phil Harrison pointed out this morning, there’s no reason to panic yet. Still, Ohio State fell seven spots in the Coaches Poll, and ten spots (from No. 11 to No. 21) in the AP Poll.

The Buckeyes will have a chance to right the ship on Tuesday, as they host Nebraska. After that, Ohio State travels to face Penn State on Saturday.

Gonzaga held on to the No. 1 spot in the poll, while Baylor jumped Duke for No. 2. The Big Ten has five teams in the poll, but the highest is Michigan State at No. 14.

The advanced metrics still respect Ohio State, though, as the Buckeyes sit at No. 7 in KenPom and No. 8 in ESPN’s BPI.

Ohio State basketball falls way down in latest AP poll

Ohio State has slid way down in the latest AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll, but how far?

It was bound to happen. After being just one day away from being ranked No. 1 in the polls, the Ohio State basketball team has now lost four games in a row and continued its slide down the polls. First, it was outside the top five, then outside the top ten, and now, in the latest AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll that was released, the Buckeyes have slid out of the top twenty, all the way down to No. 21.

I guess you could say at least the team is still ranked, especially after what we’ve seen so far in the calendar year of 2020. OSU is now winless since all the confetti fell on New Year’s night. It is 0-4 and searching for ways to take care of the basketball and find its shooting groove again.

So what’s the rest of the top twenty-five look like? It’s a revolving door of sorts, but here’s where everything stands courtesy of the official twitter feed of March Madness.

Gonzaga, Baylor, Duke, Auburn, and Butler make up your top five. The highest ranked Big Ten team is Michigan State all the way down at No. 15.

Ohio State next plays Nebraska at home Tuesday night. To say a win is much needed is the understatement of the new decade.

LSU vs. Clemson Buckeyes Wire national championship game predictions

We’ve done it all year, so we’re finishing off with our staff predictions for the big one Monday night between LSU and Clemson.

Yeah, yeah, we’re not an LSU or Clemson fan site. But hey, there’s a big one Monday night and we love football. So even if it’s being played in Alaska in a deep freeze in January we’re game. The national championship game is set to go unhinged in New Orleans Monday night and we’ll be watching and we’re sure you will be too. Unless that is, you’re still being triggered from what happened in the desert on December 28.

And really, who could blame you.

So, like we did during the season with all of the Ohio State contests, we’re opening it up to our contributors to provide their predictions for the national championship game between two dueling Tigers.

And we’re off.

NEXT … The Predictions

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Don’t worry Ohio State basketball fans, the sky is not falling just yet

Many are frustrated with what we’ve seen from the Ohio State basketball team as of late. But just wait, the season will turn around.

The Ohio State basketball team has hit a January skid. Call it the Fiesta Bowl curse, the physical brand in the Big Ten, or growing pains. No matter the case, the Buckeyes have lost four in a row on the court and have yet to win a game in the calendar year of 2020.

Apparently hindsight is not 2020.

OSU raced out to an 11-1 record, but now sit at 11-5 overall, and a surprising and disappointing 1-4 in the Big Ten. Despite a national ranking of eleventh before the loss at Indiana, it sits in a last-place tie with Northwestern in the Big Ten standings.

Can you hear the splashes of all the bandwagon fans jumping off the ship?

I’m here to tell you to take a deep breath. Things are not as bad as they appear. Yes, it’s a hard, hard truth that this team has some things to work out. The team is actually a tad younger than even last year, and you have to expect some of the new players to struggle with consistency. It’s really not a surprise. Turnovers and bad shooting have plagued the team as of late and there’s no way to swim around that.

But there are reasons.

The schedule as of late has not been kind. The Buckeyes have only lost one game at home in totality (a root canal at the hands of Wisconsin), but three on the road in conference. I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to win on the road in this league — especially this year, one in which the Big Ten is so deep. One only needs to look at Michigan State going down in a heap Sunday by almost thirty points at Purdue for evidence. Or you could point to the fact that Big Ten home teams are winning at an astounding rate this season, more so than anyone can remember.

I’ve seen people actually calling for Chris Holtmann’s job now after a four-game losing streak. Those people simply don’t know basketball, the Big Ten, or human nature at all.

Everything will be fine.

This team still has the pieces to make a run in March. It’s in a bit of a hole now that will make it difficult to win the Big Ten, but the schedule will begin to get a little easier starting Tuesday with a home game against Nebraska. There’s a tough game at Penn State after, but what follows is at home vs. Minnesota, At Northwestern, and home against Indiana. Look for the Buckeyes to claw back close to .500 after the next few games.

It’ll still be a long road to get back up in the upper division of the Big Ten, but this year even finishing with a losing record in-conference can get you into the NCAA Tournament.

This team will get better, and all of those fans and critics calling for knee-jerk changes in a still very young Big Ten campaign will grow silent.

 

 

J.J. Wolf wins Noumea Challenger title

Former Buckeye J.J. Wolf won the third Challenger title of his career as he prepares for Australian Open qualifying.

Former Ohio State tennis standout J.J. Wolf captured his second straight Challenger Tour title this past week, winning the trophy in Noumea, New Caledonia. (New Caledonia is a French-administered territorial island not too far from Australia.) He easily defeated Top 100 player Yuichi Sugita in the final, 6-2 6-2. In fact, Wolf was dominant all week. The only set he dropped was a second-set tiebreaker to World No. 80 Roberto Carballes Baena.

Wolf is now on an 11-match winning streak, as he won the Champaign Challenger–on the campus of the University of Illinois back in November, before tennis’ off-season.

Wolf was the No. 1 NCAA player in the country for most of last season, and his transition to the professional circuit has been smoother than most college stars. The former Buckeye is not yet competing in top-level ATP Tour events, but he is consistently performing well and winning on the Challenger Tour, the sport’s second-highest professional circuit. Wolf now has won three Challenger Tour titles, including one at Ohio State in Columbus last year.

Last week also witnessed a Challenger tournament in Ann Arbor, where many former and current NCAA players competed. Like the Columbus Challengers, that tournament is one of a growing number of Challenger tournaments hosted by college tennis programs. Instead of staying near home to compete there (against a much weaker field), Wolf chose to play in New Caledonia because he will be competing in qualifying for the Australian Open this week.

With a career-high ranking of World No. 181, Wolf begins his qualifying campaign on Wednesday. He has to win matches on three consecutive days to reach the main draw. He will be joined in qualifying by former Buckeyes Blaz Rola and Mikael Torpegaard, who are also ranked inside the Top 200.

On the women’s side, former Buckeye Francesca Di Lorenzo is ranked No. 121 in the world and is seeded 14th in the qualifying draw. She begins her qualifying campaign on Tuesday against Julia Grabher.

Eleven Big Ten teams projected in NCAA field

Joe Lunardi has a whopping eleven Big Ten teams in the NCAA projected field if the season were to end today.

There’s still a large part of the season to go, but the Big Ten might be on the verge of a pretty remarkable feat if things stay the course. It’s been a very unpredictable conference season so far, and that speaks to the balance of the league. Look no further than Ohio State for proof. The Buckeyes are ranked No. 11, but are just 1-4 in the league and sit in second to last place.

Michigan State has been the best so far in-conference, but it got the doors blown off of it by 29 points at Purdue Sunday. It’s anyone’s guess how many losses the league champion will have.

But there’s good news in all of this. The conference is projected to have eleven teams in the NCAA field if the season were to end today according to Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology on ESPN. That’s more than any other conference by a wide margin. In fact, the Big East is second with just six teams projected in.

And rather than name all eleven, it’s easier to name the three that wouldn’t be in if the season were to end today. Those three teams are Nebraska, Northwestern, and Minnesota. And that’s with the understanding that the Gophers are just barely out of the field right now.

Now, will arguably the deepest conference in the country get this many teams in when it all really matters? I think it would be a shock to see eleven, but with the way things are going, never say never. Either way, it looks like there’s going to be a severe Big Ten flavor to  March in 2020.

Indiana head coach Archie Miller calls Ohio State a Final Four caliber team

Indiana was able to beat Ohio State in the second half Saturday, but that didn’t change the high opinion Archie Miller has of the Buckeyes.

Indiana used a big start to the second half to separate from Ohio State this weekend and finished it with a twelve-point win. The Buckeyes struggled to slow down Indiana in the first twenty minutes as well, but played resilient and aggressive to reel things back in and took the lead into halftime.

It didn’t last though. The turnovers and poor shooting were just too much to overcome. OSU head coach Chris Holtmann and fans had to feel pretty dejected and frustrated after the game, but that’s not how Hoosier head coach Archie Miller saw things. In fact, he thinks Ohio State is a team that can go pretty deep in March.

While speaking to the media after, Miller heaped praise on this Buckeye squad.

A Final Four team? That would have been much easier to believe a couple of weeks ago, but with Ohio State losing four in a row now and looking absolutely lost on how to take care of the ball, many are wondering if this team was punching above its weight early in the season.

Is Miller just elevating the opponent with his comments like some coaches do, or does he really believe this Buckeye team can make a deep reach in March?

Where is Ohio State basketball in the latest Joe Lunardi Bracketology

After four-straight losses, you might be surprised where Joe Lunardi has Ohio State basketball in his latest Bracketology projection.

Joe Lunardi has released his latest Bracketology, and he still has a reeling Ohio State basketball squad pretty high on the seeding line. In fact, according to the ESPN master of NCAA tournament projections, he’s got the Buckeyes still on the No. 4 seed line.

While many would argue with that, there is still a very good body of work that will play well to any committee looking to put a field together. There’s the win over Cincinnati to start the year, a win over a top ten Villanova, a road victory over North Carolina, and a neutral court win over Kentucky that will probably look even better by the end of the year.

Now, before you celebrate, obviously Ohio State has to find a way to get back to the good basketball it was playing last year, and — the latest Bracketology came out before the loss at Indiana.

Regardless, for those of you that think the Buckeyes are in a free-fall, there’s still a lot to be positive about. Now, about those turnovers …

Dwayne Haskins tees up the Redskins hype for next year on Twitter

Former Ohio State and current Washington Redskins quarterback took to Twitter to tee up his excitement for next season.

The Washington Redskins had a season that many would like to forget. Things started off on the wrong foot, continued, and there was even a fired head coach in there for good measure. It all resulted in the second worse record in the league for the 2019-2020 season.

One silver lining in it all was the ability for former Ohio State quarterback Dwayne Haskins to get a real crack at valuable playing time towards the tail end of the year to show what he can do as the potential face of the Redskins franchise. He had some issues in spot duty up until that point, but his last two games were shaping up to be his best before he suffered an ankle injury.

But there is hope and optimism as former Carolina head coach Ron Rivera now takes the reigns in our nation’s capital. Another former Buckeye, Terry McLaurin was a revelation at wide receiver, and it sure looks like the team is also primed to take Chase Young with the second overall pick.

Count Haskins in the crowd of optimism too. He took to Twitter to proclaim his excitement for next year and to tell all those Washington Redskins fans that there are good things coming.

Rivera left the door open to a quarterback competition, but Haskins will get his fair shake. We’ll have to see how it all plays out next year, but you have to like the attitude of the former Heisman finalist.

We’ll be rooting for you Dwayne, because once a Buckeye …