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Ohio State's Jamar Butler on NIT Championship: '(We) Walk Through It'

Posted Apr 4th 2008 12:30PM by Sportz Assassin
Filed under: Ohio State Basketball, Big Ten Basketball, Columbus

If you haven't noticed ... and judging by ESPN's ratings you haven't ... the N.I.T. crowned their champion last night. Ohio State beat UMass, 92-85.

While is was a nice win for the Buckeyes, not all of them seemed to be impressed. Especially Jamar Butler:

"That's what happens when you put an NCAA Tournament team in the NIT. They walk through it," senior Jamar Butler said with a smile. "Write that."

Maybe. While I'm not one to dismiss the N.I.T.'s value as others do, you still need to know your role. With the way the NCAA tournament panned out, it wasn't a given that Ohio State would have done anything in the NCAAs. Maybe they would have (Villanova beat them out for that final spot and advanced to the Sweet 16).

Either way, it was a nice ending to Butler's career ... which saw him playing in the NCAA title game a year ago.

Freshman Evan Turner put it in an interesting context:

"It feels good to go out with a win," said Turner, a freshman. "I don't know if this is what a Big Ten championship feels like or a national championship feels like. Hopefully my teammates and I are fortunate enough to experience that some day. But right now, this is good enough."

All hail the NIT champs!

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Last Year's Finalists Florida and Ohio State Fail to Make Tournament

Posted Mar 16th 2008 10:20PM by Sportz Assassin
Filed under: Florida Basketball, Ohio State Basketball, Big Ten Basketball, SEC Basketball, March Madness

Last year's March Madness ended with Florida beating Ohio State for the national championship. Maybe they can face off in the N.I.T. instead.

The mass exodus of Greg Oden, Mike Conley, Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer and Al Horford have turned the Gators and Buckeyes into viewers of the NCAA tournament instead of participants.

That hasn't happened since 1980 ... which was also due to an exodus of sorts. After meeting in the championship game in 1979, Michigan State and Indiana State failed to make the '80 tourney. Maybe that had something to do with ISU's Larry Bird winning the NBA's Rookie of the Year while MSU's Magic Johnson was winning the NBA championship for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Florida became the first defending champion to miss the tournament since Kansas in 1989. The Jayhawks were banned from postseason play that season and couldn't defend their title.

Read FanHouse previews for all teams actually in the NCAA Tournament.

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NIT Selection: Prove You Were Snubbed

Posted Mar 16th 2008 9:45PM by Charles Rich
Filed under: Florida Basketball, Ohio State Basketball, Syracuse Basketball, Umass Basketball, ACC Basketball, A-10 Basketball, Big 12 Basketball, Big East Basketball, Big Ten Basketball, SEC Basketball, Mid-Majors Basketball, March Madness, Virginia Tech Basketball, MVC Basketball, Ole Miss Basketball, Arizona State Basketball

What? You didn't know the NIT announced their bids tonight as well? They were. If you were a fan of a bubble team that didn't make it, now is the chance to at least make a good showing that you were the most deserving team left out of the NCAA Tournament.

#1 seeds: Arizona State, Virginia Tech, Ohio State, Syracuse
#2 seeds: Florida, Illinois State, Ole Miss, UMass
#3 seeds: Creighton, Florida State, Dayton, Nebraska
#4 seeds: Minnesota, Cal, SIU, VCU
#5 seeds: Oklahoma State, Maryland, New Mexico, UAB
#6 seeds: Rhode Island, Akron, Cleveland State, Charlotte
#7 seeds: San Diego State, Stephen F. Austin, Utah State, UC-Santa Barbara
#8 seeds: Alabama State, Robert Morris, Morgan State, UNC-Asheville

Not much else to say. This is as big an indictment of how weak the bubble really was when you look at this list. Only a couple of these teams have any sort of argument that they were screwed by the NCAA Tournament.

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Michigan State Beats Ohio State, Big Ten Refs Do Big Ten No Favors

Posted Mar 14th 2008 4:19PM by Michael David Smith
Filed under: Ohio State Basketball, Michigan State Basketball, Big Ten Basketball, NCAA Basketball Video

Michigan State beat Ohio State today in the Big Ten Tournament, allowing the Spartans to move on and perhaps bursting the Buckeyes' bubble.

And since Ohio State might have needed a win to get into the Tournament and Michigan State didn't, an intriguing storyline emerged: Might the Big Ten referees working the game favor the Buckeyes, on the theory that an Ohio State win would likely put them in the NCAA Tournament and give the Big Ten five teams in the Big Dance instead of four? Joe Sheehan wrote at Basketball Prospectus:

It should be interesting to see how this one is called. Fair or no, it's clear that the Big 11 has a lot invested in the outcome of that game.

It was a plausible idea, but I think the above clip should put that conspiracy theory to bed. The clip shows a Big Ten referee giving Ohio State's Othello Hunter a questionable foul, followed by an even more questionable technical. Almost every questionable call in this game went against Ohio State.

Still, give credit to Michigan State for winning it. Drew Neitzel had an outstanding game, scoring 28 points, and the Spartans are back on track after looking shaky a couple of weeks ago.

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Can Any Big Ten Team Make the Final Four?

Posted Mar 12th 2008 7:55AM by Michael David Smith
Filed under: Ohio State Basketball, Wisconsin Basketball, Big Ten Basketball

Pat Forde of ESPN.com has a look at the college basketball universe with just five days to go before Selection Sunday, and when he gets to the Big Ten, he writes this:

Is there a Final Four contender in here anywhere? How about a fifth NCAA Tournament team? Hello? Anyone?
Team to beat: Wisconsin (23). Sizzle-less Badgers haven't lost to anyone other than Purdue since Dec. 8 -- and it says here they'll beat the Boilermakers when they meet a third time in the championship game.

I do think Ohio State is looking fairly solid as a fifth Tournament team, but I agree with Forde that it's hard to see how there's a Final Four contender, and that the Big Ten's best team, Wisconsin, is fairly sizzle-less.

Any Big Ten team that's good enough to make the Tournament is good enough to also make the Final Four, in the sense that you never know who's going to go on a surprising four-game run. But realistically, the Big Ten looks like it's staggering into March Madness, and I have a feeling that the conference is going to look just as bad at the end of March as it has at the beginning of January the last couple of years.

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Ohio State Gets Back on the Bubble by Beating Michigan State

Posted Mar 9th 2008 3:01PM by Michael David Smith
Filed under: Ohio State Basketball, Michigan State Basketball, Big Ten Basketball

Ohio State saved its two best games of the season for the last two games of the season, following up on Tuesday's win over Purdue with a win today over Michigan State, and getting back onto the NCAA Tournament bubble.

Jamar Butler played all 40 minutes and had a game-high 40 points to lead the Buckeyes to today's 63-54 win, and that is enough to at least give Ohio State a shot at an at-large tournament bid. Prior to today's game, Ohio State's RPI was 53, but it's moving in the right direction. And Ohio State deserves credit for its non-conference schedule; the Buckeyes beat Syracuse and Florida and lost to Texas A&M, North Carolina, Butler and Tennessee.

Still, Ohio State needs to win at least one and quite likely two Big Ten Tournament games to get to the Big Dance. The way the Buckeyes have played in the last week, no one should bet against them.

As for Michigan State, the Spartans clinched a Tournament bid some time in January, when they got off to a 19-2 start to the season. But they're 24-7 now, and they don't look much like a Tournament team. With an RPI of 14, the Spartans are obviously in no matter what they do in the Big Ten Tournament, but they're looking an awful lot like a team that will lose in the first round.

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Ohio State Beats Purdue, Back on the Bubble? (And Wisconsin Will Win the Big Ten)

Posted Mar 5th 2008 8:45AM by Michael David Smith
Filed under: Ohio State Basketball, Wisconsin Basketball, Big Ten Basketball, Purdue Basketball

Last week I assessed Ohio State's chances of making the NCAA Tournament by saying, "At this point, the Buckeyes would need to win all three of their remaining games -- at Minnesota, home against Purdue and Michigan State -- to have any shot of an at-large bid. They're NIT bound."

So when the Buckeyes lost to Minnesota, I figured that was just about it. But maybe not. Ohio State managed an 80-77 win over Purdue last night, a win that at least puts the Buckeyes back in the conversation among bubble teams, although they might need to both beat Michigan State and win a couple of games in the Big Ten Tournament to make it to the Big Dance.

"I told our guys this week, 'I need you to play ridiculously hard,' '' Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. ". . . I think they had an appreciation for the battle.'' The Buckeyes are a totally different team than the one we were watching a year ago, but playing ridiculously hard is exactly what they're doing.

Meanwhile, Purdue's loss means that Wisconsin will win the Big Ten regular season title. All the Badgers need to do is beat Penn State tonight and Northwestern on Saturday -- which they certainly will -- and Wisconsin is atop the Big Ten. It's been a great season for the Boilermakers, but the Badgers are the class of the conference.

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Tom Izzo Is Sick of the Big Ten Network

Posted Feb 28th 2008 5:04AM by Charles Rich
Filed under: Ohio State Basketball, Indiana Basketball, Michigan State Basketball, Illinois Basketball, Michigan Basketball, Big Ten Basketball, NCAA Basketball Media Watch, Purdue Basketball

Or at the very least, he is sick of the standoff between the Big Ten Network (BTN) and cable providers.

"I make more calls than I ever have this year to people who write me, really upset about it," Izzo told reporters.

Izzo also described the BTN as "a PR nightmare" and said, "I think it has hurt all of us."

Unlike college football which had most of the major teams endure only one of their 12 games on the BTN, college basketball has had a larger percentage of their games being not seen by most people on the BTN. Michigan State has been one of the Big Ten's top teams all season. They have had 9 of it's 18 conference games on the BTN and 4 of its 13 non-con games. That's a lot of games that few have seen for a top-25 team in a major conference.

Beyond simply dealing with pissed off fans and alum who can't see the games, it stands to impact recruiting. Players want to play for successful programs, but they also want to play at schools that they know will get plenty of TV exposure. If over 1/3 of the games are showing up on a channel no one has, then that is going to take a toll.

The money the schools are getting from the BTN means that this is an empty complaint from Izzo in the short term. The longer the stalemate with the major cable companies draws this out, the more you will read coaches complaining.

Cable companies want the BTN on the sports tier package, while the BTN and Big Ten insist it should be on the expanded basic level. Time is on the side of the cable companies.

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NIT or NCAA: Ohio State Buckeyes

Posted Feb 27th 2008 10:36AM by Michael David Smith
Filed under: Ohio State Basketball, Big Ten Basketball, March Madness

Throughout the season we'll look at bubble teams and assess whether they have a better chance of ending up in the NIT or NCAA Tournament.

Team: Ohio State Buckeyes

Record: 17-11 (8-7 Big Ten)

Good Wins: Syracuse on a neutral floor is only win against a team in the RPI Top 50.

Bad Losses: At Iowa, at Michigan

Comments: The Buckeyes missed an opportunity to pick up by far their biggest win of the season last night at Indiana. John Gasaway at Basketball Prospectus wrote on Tuesday that Ohio State was the Big Ten's only bubble team and added, "The Buckeyes look surprisingly good on paper in part because Thad Matta's team has benefited from a back-loaded schedule." They've lost the first two of four tough games in that back-loaded schedule.

Other Views: Ohio State ranks 51st in RPI, 27th in the Pomeroy Ratings and 37th in the Sagarin Ratings.

Verdict: At this point, the Buckeyes would need to win all three of their remaining games -- at Minnesota, home against Purdue and Michigan State -- to have any shot of an at-large bid. They're NIT bound.

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Jim O'Brien Makes Kelvin Sampson's Financial Advisor Happy

Posted Feb 20th 2008 9:45PM by Charles Rich
Filed under: Ohio State Basketball, Indiana Basketball, Big Ten Basketball, NCAA Basketball Coaches

The conventional wisdom has been that there was only one reason Kelvin Sampson wasn't immediately fired from Indiana University. After it was learned that the NCAA was alleging that Sampson didn't just overdo the phone calls as reported in October. That that he lied and/or knowingly misled the NCAA and Indiana investigators about the phone calls, the outcry for an immediate firing was strong. It didn't happen and the reason bandied about was that Indiana was afraid of getting smacked with a wrongful termination suit as Ohio State did when it fired Jim O'Brien.

Today's news should further spook the Hoosier administration. The Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal on the suit, leaving the judgment in favor of O'Brien stand.

"With this ruling, the university has exhausted all of its available appeals and the case will conclude," Ohio State spokesman Jim Lynch said in a statement. "The outcome of this case is disappointing news."

O'Brien was fired after admitting to his AD that he had sent $6000 as a loan to a likely recruit overseas. The problem was that O'Brien had a damn good attorney/agent.

Continue Reading Jim O'Brien Makes Kelvin Sampson's Financial Advisor Happy