Latest March Madness bracketology has Ohio State as an 11 seed. What it means for Buckeyes
Ohio State will go to Indiana this weekend with a chance to further solidify itself on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble.
At 17-13 overall and 9-10 in the Big Ten, the Buckeyes will face another bubble team in the Hoosiers, who are 18-12 and 9-10, respectively. Both teams are hovering right around the projected cut line for the NCAA Tournament.
Ohio State has won two straight games. After winning at USC 87-82 on Feb. 26, the Buckeyes took down Nebraska 116-114 in double overtime on Tuesday night in the highest-scoring game in Ohio State history.
The game between the Buckeyes and the Hoosiers will also decide each team’s seed for the Big Ten Tournament.
Here’s where the Buckeyes sit in the major bracketology projections:
According to the USA Today update published Friday, the Buckeyes have narrowly climbed back into position to avoid the First Four. Ohio State is listed as a No. 11 seed but is not among the last four teams to be selected.
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, in his Friday update, has moved Ohio State into a first-round bye after having it first on the list of the last four teams in the field in Tuesday’s update. As a No. 10 seed, Lunardi has the Buckeyes playing No. 7 seed BYU in Lexington, Kentucky.
The winner of that game would face the winner of a game between No. 2 seed Alabama and No. 15 seed South Alabama.
CBS’ Jerry Palm has moved Ohio State up from no longer being listed as a bubble team in last week’s update to third among the final four teams included in this Friday’s bracket update. As a No. 11 seed, Palm has Ohio State playing fellow No. 11 seed Boise State in a First Four game.
In a Wednesday update, The Athletic has Ohio State as a No. 11 seed playing No. 6 seed Louisville in Wichita but avoiding the First Four as the final at-large team to earn a bye.
BracketMatrix.com, which compiles dozens of bracket projections, has Ohio State as a No. 11 seed. Eighty-nine of the 105 projections now include the Buckeyes.
The Buckeyes are No. 35 in the NET rankings used by the NCAA Tournament selection committee to evaluate resumes and seed the field. Ohio State is 6-10 in Quad 1 games, 3-3 in Quad 2 and has no losses outside the first two quadrants.
As of Friday morning, BartTorvik.com gives Ohio State a 60.4% chance of making the NCAA Tournament. Prior to the USC game, that number was 39.5%.
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@AdamJardy
Ohio State basketball standing in latest bracketology
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Welcome to the Skull Session.
Jeremiah Smith is HIM.
Have a good Friday.
TIME TO DANCE? Will the Basketbucks make the NCAA Tournament? How Ohio State performs in its regular-season finale against Indiana could determine the answer.
When the Buckeyes and Hoosiers face off in Bloomington on Saturday (3:45 p.m. on CBS), there will be lots at stake for both teams: An improved résumé on the NCAA Tournament bubble and, with Ohio State and Indiana tied for ninth place in the conference, a first-round bye in the Big Ten Tournament.
In the 15-team Big Ten Tournament (the bottom three teams will not attend), the league’s top nine teams earn first-round byes and avoid Wednesday’s opening round. Therefore, whoever on Saturday at Assembly Hall earns the No. 9 seed and will face either Oregon or Illinois on Thursday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, while the loser earns the No. 10 seed and will face the No. 15 seed (which could be like six different teams) on Wednesday.
With it all on the line, Jake Diebler said he and the Buckeyes will be prepared for whatever challenges the team faces this weekend.
“It’s obviously a really tough environment to play in, but we’ve shown we can handle it,” Diebler said Tuesday after a double-overtime win that took years off my life. “With how difficult this league is, the quality of opponent night in and night out, I find it really hard to believe that everybody’s season is on the line every single game. That’s not to diminish how important the game is. I haven’t shied away from that. I want our guys to live in the moment, prepare well, put our best foot forward. That’s the most important thing.”
Whether Diebler believes it or not, Ohio State’s season was on the line against Nebraska. Once seen as a virtual lock to make the NCAA Tournament, the Buckeyes lost three consecutive games to Michigan, Northwestern (70-49… at home…) and UCLA.. A win at USC put Ohio State back on track, but a loss to the Cornhuskers could have knocked the Buckeyes back off the rails.
Following Ohio State’s win over Nebraska, the Buckeyes positioned themselves as one of the last four byes or one of the last four teams in. The Field of 68 also has Ohio State as one of the last four teams in and set to face Xavier at UD Arena in Dayton, which would be quite the spectacle.
“This league deserves a lot of teams in the tournament,” Diebler said. “It does. If you’re hovering close to .500 in this league, you’ve walked away with some impressive wins. We should be having the max of that (type of resume) in the tournament because the quality of teams, quality of wins and quality of wins our league had outside of the Big Ten.”
NEW BEGINNINGS. In December, five-star freshman quarterback Air Noland transferred from Ohio State to South Carolina. The decision surprised me, considering Noland’s Georgia ties – I bet someone United States dollars he would transfer to Georgia Tech – and the fact that LaNorris Sellers had an award-winning redshirt freshman season with the Gamecocks.
However, amid Noland’s first interview in Columbia, the former Ohio State signal-caller said South Carolina was the perfect fit for him.
“The people here, South Carolina was a great decision as far as the people,” Noland said, per Alex Jones of The Big Spur. “Great conditioning program, coach (Mike) Shula. Also, the quarterback room with Dante (Reno), LaNorris, Cutter (Woods) and Luke (Doty) is even in there helping us each and every day. The all-around journey helped me make a decision to go to South Carolina.”
Noland then expressed thankfulness toward Ryan Day and Chip Kelly for the opportunities both coaches offered him in Columbus.
“I learned a lot,” Noland said. “I learned the playbook can extend very far as long as you can take on everything that they are giving you. I learned a lot from Chip Kelly. He’s a great coach and I feel like he taught me a lot of knowledge that I needed. Just the people around pushed me every day.”
Now in a battle to backup Sellers at South Carolina, Noland believes the competition will bring out the best in him.
“It pushes you each and every day,” Noland said. “It doesn’t let you be lackadaisical. It makes you be a better quarterback. Competition brings out the best of you. With a quarterback like LaNorris Sellers, he’s a guy that I can push and hopefully just compete with and have fun.”
I would have loved to see Noland stick around in Columbus to compete with Julian Sayin, Lincoln Kienholz and Tavien St. Clair, but I also understand his decision to look for better opportunities. Each time I interviewed him for Eleven Warriors – which was a handful of times last offseason – he was polite and respectful. He also had a quiet confidence about him, one that inspired me to believe he had a bright future ahead of him with the Buckeyes. Instead, that future will occur with the Gamecocks, and I wish him the best of luck.
WIDE RECEIVER U. Matthew Golden impressed scouts at the NFL Combine last week. The Texas wide receiver, who collected two catches for 51 yards in his team’s Cotton Bowl loss to Ohio State, has average size (6-foot, 195 pounds) but ran a blazing 4.29-second 40 with a 1.49 10-yard split.
After the combine, an NFL coach texted Bruce Feldman of The Athletic and shared that he’s “a big golden fan.”
Why is he a big Golden fan?
Well, because Golden reminds him of the pass catchers Ohio State has sent to the NFL since Brian Hartline took over as wide receivers coach in 2019.
One NFL coach texted me saying he is a big Golden fan and was hoping he wouldn’t run that fast because he thought Golden was being undervalued in the draft community: “He’s razor-sharp getting in and out of his cuts and he plays a lot bigger than his size. I like him more than their two WRs last year (Xavier Worthy and AD Mitchell). He’s the best route runner in this draft. He looks like one of those Ohio State (receiver) products.”
Yeah, Ohio State is Wide Receiver U.
There’s no debate.
ON THE MAT. This weekend, the Wrestlebucks will compete at the 2025 Big Ten Championships. While No. 7 Ohio State will be hard-pressed to contend for a conference title behind No. 1 Penn State and No. 2 Iowa, I’m looking for Tom Ryan’s squad to compete with No. 5 Nebraska and No. 6 Minnesota for third place.
Here are the 10 wrestlers Ohio State sent to Evanston, Illinois:
According to the experts at FloWrestling, Ohio State has a championship favorite, championship contenders and championship sleepers in the tournament.
What dat mean?
Defending champion Jesse Mendez is a favorite at 141, with Penn State’s Beau Bartlett as a close second.
All-American Carson Kharchla, who has overcome two torn ACLs in his Ohio State career, is a contender at 174. So is Nick Feldman at 285, though Feldman will – and I write this with complete respect for the sophomore standout – need divine intervention to beat Minnesota’s Gable Steveson and/or Penn State’s Greg Kerkvliet to win a title.
Brendan McCrone, who pinned Penn State’s Luke Lilledahl in the regular season, is a sleeper. FloWrestling also called McCrone a “landmine” that could mean trouble for Purdue’s Matt Ramos, Nebraska’s Caleb Smith and Lilledahl, the top three seeds at 125.
Best of luck to the favorite, the contenders and the sleepers at the Big Ten Tournament. Bring home some hardware.
SONG OF THE DAY. Stadium Series Performance – Twenty One Pilots.
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Mike Woodson’s last IU home games as player and coach: High stakes battles vs. Ohio State
There are eerie similarities between Mike Woodson’s last home game as an IU basketball player, and his final game inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall as a coach.
Woodson’s senior season at IU, the 1979-80 campaign, started out with great promise. Led by Woodson, Randy Wittman, Ray Tolbert, Isiah Thomas, Butch Carter, Ted Kitchel, Landon Turner and others, Bob Knight’s Hoosiers were the preseason No. 1 team.
Wittman believes the 1980 team was better than his team that won the national title the following season.
“The 1980 team was better than the ’81 team that won the national championship, without a question,” Wittman said in 2020. “Because of injuries and him (Woodson) going down with back surgery, we weren’t able to be the team that I think we could have been.”
They weren’t No. 1, but most fans were optimistic about Woodson’s final season as head coach, and the polls backed them up. After assembling a talented roster during the offseason that included five players who earned All-Conference honors last year, Indiana was ranked No. 17 in the preseason AP Top-25.
Injuries had a massive impact on Indiana’s early season fortunes in 1979-80, as Wittman was lost for the year with a foot injury, and Woodson had midseason back surgery.
The setbacks haven’t been quite as dramatic this season, but Indiana has dealt with injuries. Trey Galloway was sluggish out of the gate after offseason knee surgery, and Malik Reneau missed several games with a knee injury.
Without Woodson and Wittman, IU struggled in 1979-80. They went just 10-7 from mid-December to early February, and barely resembled a team that had legitimate preseason national title hopes. Suddenly, they were a longshot to make the NCAA Tournament field. They’d completely fall out of the rankings in early February after falling to 14-7 overall and 7-5 in the Big Ten.
Woodson’s final team as head coach fell on hard times as well, losing seven of eight in January and early February, a stretch that lined up with Reneau’s injury once the schedule stiffened, and his struggle to regain his rhythm once he returned. IU fell to 14-10 overall, and 5-8 in the Big Ten. Their season was spiraling out of control, and Woodson’s retirement was announced on Feb. 7.
In 1980, Woodson returned for Indiana following surgery on Feb. 14 at Iowa, and the Hoosiers won five straight ahead of their home finale against Ohio State.
This year’s team found their stride on Feb. 11 at Michigan State, when they upset the eventual Big Ten champion Spartans. It was the first of four wins in five games to resuscitate their season.
Both 1980 and this 2025 campaign hit their regular season climax in the final home game. And in both instances the opponent was/is Ohio State in a do-or-die scenario.
With their dramatic late season run in 1980, Indiana put themselves in position to win the Big Ten with a win over Ohio State on March 2. The teams were tied atop the league standings at 12-5. It would be a winner-take-all Big Ten title game at Assembly Hall.
“The greatest game ever played in that building. Bar none,” IU Sr. Associate AD Jeremy Gray said this week.
“I wholeheartedly second Jeremy’s endorsement of the 1980 IU vs Ohio State game. That always will rank No. 1 for me and I announced a great number of them,” former IU public address announcer Chuck Crabb said.
Woodson scored 21 points in IU’s dramatic 76-73 overtime win over Ohio State in the finale to secure the conference title. Isiah Thomas also had 21 for the Hoosiers, and Butch Carter made free throws to force the extra session.
The 1980 Buckeyes featured star freshman Clark Kellogg, who now works for CBS and is a prominent part of the college basketball scene in March. It remains to be seen whether Kellogg will make an appearance on Saturday in Bloomington when CBS calls the game. Woodson and Kellogg are good friends.
Unlike the 1980 season, these 2025 Hoosiers have already defeated Ohio State once. The 1980 Hoosiers lost 59-58 in Columbus, while this year’s edition won 77-76 in overtime in January, their lone win in that seven losses in eight games slump.
There’s no Big Ten title on the line when Indiana (18-12, 9-10) and Ohio State (17-13, 9-10) meet again. But there is plenty at stake.
Both teams are viewed as firmly on the bubble when it comes to their NCAA Tournament hopes. A loss on Saturday could be a dagger for the loser, and put the winner comfortably in the field.
Woodson’s 1980 Hoosiers got the job done and beat the Buckeyes in Bloomington.
What say you, Woodson’s 2025 squad?
For complete coverage of IU basketball, GO HERE.
The Daily Hoosier –“Where Indiana fans assemble when they’re not at Assembly”
