Ohio State deserves 'to be in the conversation' for NCAA Tournament, Jake Diebler says
There might be an NCAA Tournament resume in Ohio State’s full body of work this season.
To get there, it helps to squint, focus in on the last month, add in an early-season game or two and block out a lot of the rest. What’s not hard to see is that, under interim coach Jake Diebler, the Buckeyes have looked like a team worthy of playing in March Madness for the final weeks of the season.
Now as they enter the Big Ten Tournament, the question becomes whether they can do enough to overshadow that midseason stretch of nine losses in 11 games that cost coach Chris Holtmann his job.
“We’ve talked openly about what’s at stake,” Diebler said Monday, looking ahead to Thursday’s second-round game against Iowa. “We talked about that going into last game (at Rutgers). Our guys have helped everyone keep the main thing the main thing and that is focus on the next game. None of that (postseason talk) matters without us giving our absolute best on Thursday.”
It’s fair to say that the Buckeyes are making things interesting but that there’s work to be done just to get into the conversation.
As of Wednesday morning, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi doesn’t have them among either his first four or his next four out, but they do appear on a list of games titled “win here, then win again.” Iowa, conversely, is included under “out without this win” and appears second among the next four out.
Sunday night, CBS’ Jerry Palm called the Buckeyes his biggest bubble winners during an appearance on CBS Sports HQ and described them as being on the bubble. Wednesday, Palm had Ohio State as the final team among the next four out. USA Today also has the Buckeyes among the next four out.
BracketMatrix.com, which compiles 88 different bracket projections, has one that includes Ohio State in the field: a website called waywardtrends.com, titled “Bryan Wilson Empirical Ratings,” has the Buckeyes as a No. 12 seed and the final team in the field.
“I would think a couple of our top wins would stack up against any team in the country,” Diebler said. “We’ve now stacked together some road wins. Also, the momentum that we have and the way we’ve been playing lately, there’s a lot of positives that would help our case, but I would absolutely we deserve to be in the conversation and that includes the total body of work.”
Ohio State is No. 55 in the NCAA’s NET rankings. The Buckeyes are 3-6 in Quadrant 1 and 2-5 in Quadrant 2 and recently lost a win in the latter category. A 79-75 double-overtime home win against Maryland was a Quad 2 game for the Buckeyes, but the Terrapins have slipped to No. 77 in the NET. Entering Wednesday night’s Big Ten Tournament win against Rutgers, Maryland had slipped to a Quad 3 win for Ohio State.
The Buckeyes are the No. 43 team in the nation according to the analytics at BartTorvik.com, which gives them a 24.7% chance of making the NCAA Tournament.
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“We’re just trying to fight and see how far we can go with it,” sophomore center Felix Okpara said after the win against Rutgers. “Obviously we’ve got to still go strong into the Big Ten Tournament but we’re just trying to show we can actually play in the NCAA Tournament. I feel like we’re just playing together and we have something to prove.”
What is it that Okpara feels the Buckeyes have to prove?
“We want to prove to everyone that we’re not the same old team we were,” he said. “We’re a better team. We’ve always been a better team. We just got more together these last few months.”
Their most important chance of the season to prove as such arrives Thursday night.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Jake Diebler: Ohio State deserves to be in NCAA Tournament conversation
