Illinois head coach Brad Underwood and Duke head coach Jon Scheyer had nothing but good things to say about their February meeting at Madison Square Garden, smack in the middle of ACC and Big Ten play.
The Blue Devils made it a laugher, winning by 43 points, but both coaches thought scheduling that non-conference game for February instead of November benefited their teams and prepared them for the NCAA Tournament.
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Jake Diebler is hoping that Ohio State’s game against Virginia on Valentine’s Day will serve a similar purpose. He would, however, like it to end differently than it did for conference counterpart Illinois last season.
“Virginia and (head) Coach Odom were kind of like ‘Hey, we want to do this too,’ and I think they’re going to be a really good team, so we were like, let’s make this happen,” Diebler told Land-Grant Holy Land last week. “And it’s so hard, because you need another coach to buy into that concept to do something different like that – this big-time game in the middle of your conference season – but I think the intent is to (do) something different and the intent of breaking up the Big Ten season. I (also) think the intent is simulating an NCAA
Tournament game, which is why we did it.”
With the Buckeyes opening the season with six consecutive home games – five of which are against teams that finished outside of the top-150 in KenPom last year – the non-conference schedule is not moving a ton of people.
However, the game against Virginia – which will be played at Nashville’s Bridgestone Area – raises the water level of Ohio State’s schedule a bit. It’s easy to overlook because the game will be played three months into the season, but facing the Cavaliers in February will a big hurdle in the middle of Big Ten play.
As Ohio State fans well know, the Big Ten has been a grind for the Buckeyes the past several seasons once the calendar flips over on Jan. 1. Ohio State is not alone in that struggle, but the Buckeyes’ 8-16 record in February Big Ten games over the past three seasons is the second-worst in the conference, of the 14 teams that have been in league for the last three years.
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Ohio State was 3-5 this past February in Diebler’s first season as head coach.
When asked last week if he might have different feelings about the game once the Big Ten schedule is out and he knows which B1G teams will be sandwiched around it, Diebler said the Buckeyes are going to have “20 challenging games” in conference play.
The notion that the Virginia game could be easier or tougher based on which games are before and after it didn’t resonate with Diebler, who said that Virginia will be “a change of pace” from the B1G schedule, but that the Big Ten may be the best conference in college basketball this year, making the games surrounding that one mostly irrelevant.
With the Big Ten conference schedule officially dropping Thursday afternoon, we know that Ohio State’s Big Ten schedule in of February is going to be difficult, and throwing Virginia into the mix will just make it tougher for a Buckeye team that’s really struggled in February the last few seasons.
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Even without Virginia, that month is going to be a gauntlet for Ohio State, and the Cavaliers won’t be a reprieve from the grind. The month starts out with a road trip to Maryland on Feb. 5 — a venue that Ohio State has lost each of the last three trips to, by an average of 15.3 points.
After that, the Buckeyes come home to face Michigan in the Roddy Gayle bowl on Feb. 8. Three days later, the USC Trojans make the trip to Columbus, and the Nashville battle with Virginia is three days after that, on Feb. 14.
Ohio State then closes the month with a home game against Wisconsin (Feb. 17), and road games at Michigan State (Feb. 22), and Iowa (Feb. 25). Not to peek too far ahead, but the Buckeyes’ first game of March is against Big Ten favorite Purdue.
Fortunately for Ohio State, the timing of the Virginia game should not matter when it comes time to compare NCAA Tournament resumes.
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Assuming that UVA is good, it’ll be a game that will boost Ohio State’s tournament seeding if they win, but should not hurt them if they lose. The result of the game won’t be viewed any differently if it was played in November or February.
But during the grind of the Big Ten schedule, it’s another capable opponent that did not have to be thrown into an already chaotic February.
Diebler is excited for the late-season challenge of facing Virginia right now, but will his feelings change in five months if the Buckeyes are dancing on the NCAA Tournament bubble once again, and instead of getting five days off between Big Ten games, his team has to fly to Tennessee to face a potentially ranked Virginia team? Only time will tell.
