Ohio State Buckeyes draw Wisconsin Badgers in Big Ten tournament

On Mar 5, 2023

Ohio State will open Big Ten tournament play with a first-round game against No. 12 seed Wisconsin at the United Center in Chicago.

The full bracket will be finalized Sunday evening, but No. 13 seed Ohio State now knows its next opponent. With a Sunday game against Minnesota still pending, the Badgers are 16-13 overall and 8-11 in the Big Ten. The game will tip at 6:30 p.m. E.T. and be televised by the Big Ten Network.

Wisconsin won the lone meeting between the teams this season, 65-60 at Value City Arena on Feb. 2.

Although the Buckeyes will enter the postseason having taken an 84-78 loss at Michigan State on Saturday, they have won two of their last three after enduring a stretch of nine straight losses as part of a season-sinking run of 14 losses in 15 games.

“When it’s one and done, it’s all about how you play on that given night,” Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann said after the loss to the Spartans. “The fact of the matter is we have played well in this closing stretch. We’ll need to have great preparation for whoever we play and continue to play in the way we’ve played here the last couple of weeks and see where it goes from there.”

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Ohio State had been locked in as the No. 13 seed for some time, but the compressed league standings meant it wouldn’t learn its opponent until Sunday evening. No. 13 seeds are 6-8 all-time in the tournament. The Buckeyes had previously never been lower than a No. 11 seed when they lost to No. 14 seed Rutgers in the 2017 tournament and when they lost to No. 6 seed Penn State in 1998.

Ohio State is 34-19 overall in the tournament and won it in 2002, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2013. The Buckeyes have finished as runners-up in 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012 and most recently 2021 when it lost to Illinois in overtime.

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Under Holtmann, the Buckeyes are 34-19 overall in the tournament and are 4-4 during the four seasons in which it has been held with Holtmann in charge at Ohio State.

At 13-18 overall, the Buckeyes will need an unprecedented run in order to extend their season beyond Chicago. Although the NIT dropped its requirement that all participants have at least a .500 record for inclusion, no team below that mark has been selected. Ohio State would have to capture a Big Ten tournament title to get to .500, and doing so would earn the Buckeyes the league’s automatic bid for the NCAA Tournament.

Further, no team in Ohio State’s position has ever won the Big Ten tournament. Since the league expanded to 14 teams in 2014-15, no team to participate in the first day’s slate of games has won more than twice.

“It’s all about being 1-0 in these settings,” Holtmann said. “Can we get to 1-0 and figure it out from there? We’ve done the four games in four days a couple years ago. It’s obviously taxing, but it’s all about getting to 1-0 and figuring it out from there.”