Ever since the college football season ended with that second OSU loss, I wondered what to do with myself. Ya, the Ohio State Buckeyes have a basketball team, but I was on the fence about paying attention to their season. I loved Thad Matta. I thought he was a relatively good, and possibly even great, coach. We aren’t Duke or Kentucky, and I am ok with that. We should be happy with a Thad. Couple that with the fact that 4 out of the first 5 OSU games were on the BTN+ package and I was ready to just follow the MAC Shootyhoops season.
Well, Chase was dumb enough to send me a credit card, so I decided to sign up for the service. I even paid an extra 5 dollars I’ll never actually pay so that I can see the terrible teams you miserable fucks root for, too. It was money well not spent.
In the first two games, Ohio State demolished two teams that they should, in fact, demolish. There were some slow rotations on defense that will result in a poster and a teabag from the North Carolinas of the world. The offense clunky at times and those are good things. My one knock on Matta was that his teams never really got better as the year went on. This young team, while somewhat decent, could get a lot better.
Right now, Ohio State is a beat the shitbags on your schedule, lose to most of the good teams, and struggle with the rest type of team. In other words, they should be around .500. If Holtmann can make them better as the season goes on, then they could flirt with an NIT birth, or if he actually coaches them up, they could be an NCAA tournament bubble team.