Nobody knows anything in college basketball this season. As the Wisconsin Badgers and all other non-independent teams across the country prepare for the heart of conference play, the Ohio State Buckeyes are as much of a mystery as anyone in this sport. The Badgers have no way of knowing which team will show up when Wisconsin visits Columbus this Friday night.
Neither does anyone else, the Buckeyes included.
Ohio State’s last six games have embodied the craziness and the lack of linear logic in the 2019-2020 college hoops campaign. If you claim to know what to expect on Friday, go to Las Vegas and make bank. I’m going to say that I have no clue.
You tell me what to make of the Buckeyes in their last six games. They went into Chapel Hill and crushed North Carolina by 25 points. Yes, North Carolina is injured and thin, but Cole Anthony played for a good portion of that game. It still didn’t matter. Ohio State looked like the No. 1 team in the country on that night. The Buckeyes then beat Penn State by 32 points. Penn State still has to prove itself, but the Nittany Lions certainly aren’t terrible this season, and Ohio State tossed around PSU like a rag doll.
Then came the swerve off the road. The Buckeyes were unrecognizable in a 13-point loss to Minnesota. Ohio State had been clamping down on opponents left and right, but the Golden Gophers hung 84 points on them in Williams Arena. After being burned in The Barn, Ohio State won a cupcake game against Southeast Missouri and then defeated Kentucky in Las Vegas on national television. The Buckeyes offered the appearance that the Minnesota game was an aberration.
Then came this past Sunday. The Buckeyes lost in Cleveland to West Virginia. If their defense let them down against Minnesota, their offense died against the Mountaineers, managing only 59 points. West Virginia basically beat Ohio State with as much comfort as it defeated Youngstown State a few weeks earlier.
So, will the real Buckeyes stand up? That’s a fair question. A better question: Are the real Buckeyes good or bad. In a season which has not revealed a single dominant team, Ohio State is one of many faces in a crowd which could get on a run or go bust in March. As we begin the heart of the Big Ten season after the two conference games played in December, Wisconsin and the rest of us are wondering if Ohio State — or any other team in the Big Ten — is ready to be consistently good.