NCAA Tournament: Ohio State men’s basketball skidding into postseason

Here is a look at the squads prior to the Big Dance:

1. Coach Chris Holtmann’s team is 19-11 and finished in a three-way tie for fourth place in the Big Ten.

The men’s basketball Buckeyes are 10 years removed from their last conference championship, and 2022 marks the fourth straight season they failed to even crack the top two.

Ending at least one of those streaks looked possible entering the last week of February, but the team has stumbled recently.

“I wish I could tell you,” leading scorer E.J. Liddell replied Thursday night when asked what happened to the Buckeyes since an 86-83 win at eventual league co-champion Illinois on Feb. 24. “I wish I could address it. If I knew, I would address it with the team and we’ll try to fix it, but I don’t know.”

The Buckeyes lost to unranked Maryland, Nebraska and Michigan while mixing in a surprise thumping of Michigan State over the last two weeks, and three of those count as bad losses.

The Wolverines are 34th in KenPom.com efficiency ratings while the Spartans are No. 41, but the Terrapins, Cornhuskers and Nittany Lions all rank 82nd or worse.

2. The Buckeyes have a pair of stars, but the supporting cast (and defense) have been inconsistent.

Liddell earned All-Big Ten first-team honors for the second straight season after averaging 19.4 points and 7.9 rebounds per game in the regular season. The versatile scorer also made the All-Defensive Team and has scored in double figures in 41 straight games.

First-year guard Malaki Branham was named Big Ten Freshman of the Year after averaging 13.2 points per game in the regular season. He averaged 20.0 points per game in the last eight prior to scoring 16 against Penn State on Thursday night, but Holtmann has expressed concern for playing him too many minutes down the stretch.

“We’re really reliant on a freshman to carry a big load for us and it’s probably too much, honestly, against the kind of physicality that he’s facing to expect that of him,” Holtmann said Thursday night. “We’re not going to change our age right now, but I thought at the end of the day, (Penn State’s) physicality did wear us down a little bit. It wore him down a little bit, but that’s been the case for everybody the last eight games. You saw that at Maryland, you’ve seen that pretty much every game.”

A reliable third scorer has not emerged for Ohio State, which got 7.4 points per game from senior point guard Jamari Wheeler and a little more than eight points per game piece from big men Kyle Young and Zed Key.

Justin Ahrens, a senior from Versailles, began the season in the starting lineup and as one of the top 3-point threats in the Big Ten, but he has been in a shooting slump since the end of December and averages 5.4 points per game.

Wheeler, a transfer from Penn State known for his defensive prowess, was 13th in the Big Ten in assist/turnover ratio during conference play at 1.8.

As a team, Ohio State is 33rd overall in efficiency ratings from KenPom.com, including 12th in offensive rating but just 130 on defense.

3. Injuries have been an issue.

Key, Young and backup point guard Meechie Johnson all missed the Penn State loss.

Young missed last three games while in concussion protocol, Key missed three of the last four because of an ankle issue, and Johnson turned an ankle in the regular season finale.

Whether they are available for the next stage of the postseason remains to be seen.

Ohio State has also played most of the season without Justice Sueing and Seth Towns, veteran wings who respectively played six and zero games this season because of injuries.

“Honestly, I’m not going to make any excuses,” Liddell said. “We need to play harder. If we don’t know that by now, something’s wrong, but we’ve got a week to get better. This is our longest break in a while. Hopefully we can get healthy and come back out and play.”

4. The picture is brighter for the Ohio State women’s basketball team.

Coach Kevin McGuff’s crew will also enter the NCAA Tournament coming off an upset loss in the Big Ten tourney after being stopped by Indiana in the semifinals last weekend, but his Buckeyes already have a new trophy for the case.

They shared the regular season Big Ten crown with Iowa, a feat considering they lost star guard Madison Greene to a knee injury before the season began.

Braxtin Miller, a sixth-year senior from Alter, was fifth in the Big Ten in assist/turnover ratio (2.0) while All-Big Ten guards Jacy Sheldon averaged 19.5 points per game and Taylor Mikesell added 18.8 for the Buckeyes, who are 23-6.

They had won seven of eight games before the loss to the Hoosiers in Indianapolis.

5. Both squads are projected to receive similar seeds.

ESPN’s Charlie Creme projected McGuff’s team as a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Buckeyes are set to return to the Big Dance for the first time since 2018 when they lost in the second round.

Creme’s counterpart, Joe Lunardi, has the men’s team also projected as a six seed.

The Buckeye men have received an at-large bid to the last three tournaments that were held but last reached the Sweet 16 in 2015.

The women’s team made back-to-back Sweet 16s in 2016 and ‘17.