One month ago, talk of the NCAA Tournament didn’t even qualify as wishful thinking for the Ohio State men’s basketball team.

As Valentine’s Day dawned, the Buckeyes awoke with a 14-11 record and a spot perched just ahead of Michigan in the Big Ten basement. Ohio State was 4-10 in league play and still smarting from a 62-54 loss at Wisconsin when coach Chris Holtmann was called into athletic director Gene Smith’s office. One week after being told his job was safe through the end of the season and contingent on reaching the NCAA Tournament, Holtmann was fired with six games remaining.

In his place, Smith asked associate head coach Jake Diebler to step into the void and provide a spark to a season that was limping toward the finish line. From there, Ohio State won five of its final six regular-season games, avoided the first day of the Big Ten Tournament and bowed out in a 77-74 loss to No. 2 seed Illinois in the quarterfinals with Diebler as the interim coach.

It was a Cinderella-type run, and at 20-13 overall the Buckeyes put themselves in position to keep playing basketball.

“We’ve earned the right to play in the postseason, and considering where we were to where we are now, I think that’s such a great thing,” Diebler, who as of Saturday evening was finalizing a deal to become the full-time coach, said after Friday’s loss to the Illini. “We may have fallen a little short. We’ll see. Certainly we’ve worked our way onto the bubble, but I think postseason is absolutely there for us in some way. We’ve got a lot of guys who embrace that.”

The most likely outcome is an NIT berth for the Buckeyes who, like Diebler said, had worked their way onto the bubble. The problem was that the loss to the Illini almost assuredly that they will stay on the wrong side of it as the NCAA Tournament field is unveiled.

As of Saturday morning, Ohio State was No. 50 in the NET rankings used by the selection committee to evaluate resumes and seed the NCAA Tournament field. The Buckeyes finish their season 3-7 in Quadrant 1 games and 3-5 in Quadrant 2, making them a combined 6-12 in the first two Quadrants.

No high-major team higher than Ohio State in the rankings had as few as six such wins. A win against the Illini would’ve been a Quad 1 victory and set up a Saturday semifinal showdown with Nebraska, which also would’ve been a Quad 1 game.

“We figured it out together on the fly and I feel like we did a really good job with it,” freshman wing Scotty Middleton said. “Obviously there’s a scoreboard at the end of the game and somebody has to win and lose, but we gave everything we had out there. I wouldn’t want to play for any other group than with these guys right here.”

After the loss to Illinois, Ohio State’s players expressed reserved hope that they could still be selected for the NCAA Tournament but quietly acknowledged that the ship for that had sailed. Still, sophomore guard Roddy Gayle Jr. said, the close to the season showed something about the team.

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“It would’ve been easy for us back on February 14 to give up, and I feel like we have an amazing group of guys who were able to push me and the staff and keep my head high,” he said. “One thing I really take from this lesson is keep moving forward. Never give up. Miracles can happen.”

That’s what it would take for Ohio State to hear its name called Sunday night. In an update published Saturday night, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi included Ohio State among the “next four out” and listed the Buckeyes last in that group.

ajardy@dispatch.com

@AdamJardy

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State March Madness bracket predictions for 2024 NCAA Tournament