The Ohio State Buckeyes men's basketball team is back on the bubble after their tough loss to Michigan State, with just four games to go.
With four games remaining, the Ohio State Buckeyes are back on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Ohio State entered its final seven games as one of the first four out for the tournament. They were staring down a schedule that had four ranked opponents on the schedule, three of which are in Quad One.
The Buckeyes were likely going to need to go 5-2 in that stretch to get over twenty wins and feel very good about their tournament hopes.
Instead, they have lost twice by a combined 10 points and again find themselves on the outside looking in. According to Bracketologist Joe Lunardi, they are actually listed as the first team out of the tournament.
However, all hope is not lost on this Buckeyes team.
They still have two very high-quality opponents left in the four games that remain on their schedule.
Their final chase to the tournament gets started on Wednesday night when they make a trip down to Iowa to take on the Hawkeyes in a must-win game.
Then, they come home on Sunday for a date with the No. 8 Purdue Boilermakers on Sunday afternoon. If they can pull outvictories in those two matchups, then they will have just Penn State and Indiana in their way to get to the tournament.
That, of course, is easier said than done.
The Buckeyes are going to need special performances from several players on their team. Guard Bruce Thornton has been one of the lone bright spots on this roster this year. He has been so consistently good at scoring that he has vaulted to No. 2 in points scored in Buckeyes' history.
He feels like a given, but the rest of the bunch cannot be left behind.
When Ohio State beat Wisconsin last Tuesday, they got contributions from just about everyone else on the team, including Devin Royal, who was the second leading scorer in that win.
Then, the Buckeyes must find a way to break their most consistent curse of the season. They simply cannot string together victories. They started the year on a 6-0 spurt before dropping their first game.
After that, they have just gone win, loss, win, loss with two two-game winstreaks sprinkled in there. They need to find a way to become more consistent over the last stretch of games to end the season.
If they can do that through the end of the regular season and into the tournament, then the Buckeyes should be in solid shape to make the Big Dance.
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