Please follow and like us: OSU players cheer during a game against Michigan State on Feb. 23 at the Schottenstein Center.Credit: Samantha Hollingshead | Photo Editor Since early November, the Ohio State men’s basketball team has been trudging through a 31-game swamp of a regular season, its caliber of play seemingly as unpredictable as the Ohio weather. The Buckeyes’ future went from being grayscale amid an early three-game losing skid to technicolor after they stunned then-No. 4 Kentucky before fading fast into an unidentifiable palette during conference play. Yet now the regular season, and all its confusion, has concluded, and seventh-seeded OSU (19-12, 11-7) has been allotted a chance to start over Thursday in the Big Ten tournament against 10th-seeded Penn State. The game, which is scheduled to tip off at 6:30 p.m. in Indianapolis, is the epitome of a make-or-break situation for the Buckeyes. OSU not only needs a victory to advance in the tournament, but a first-round exit would, effectively, end all its chances of an NCAA tournament berth. “I think that mostly our guys have a pretty good understanding that you’re entering into a tournament that if you don’t win, you go home,” OSU coach Thad Matta said Monday on the Big Ten coaches teleconference. “The level should be raised in terms of how we want to play and how we want to compete.” OSU enters the conference tournament on the heels of two double-digit losses to now-second-ranked Michigan State with a victory over then-No. 8 Iowa sandwiched in between. The Nittany Lions (16-15, 7-11) wander into the Bankers Life Fieldhouse winners of five of their last eight games, headlined by wins over eventual regular-season conference champion Indiana and then-No. 4 Iowa. …
Continue Reading: An ‘interesting matchup’ vs. Penn State awaits Ohio State men’s basketball in Big Ten tournament …
