Ohio State men’s basketball drops to No. 19 in AP Poll

The Buckeyes’ nightmare scenario didn’t come true last week, as they were able to at least split their two games against No. 8 Wisconsin and Penn State. After getting beat pretty cleanly in Madison Thursday night, No. 19 Ohio State (11-4, 5-2) then came home and out-slopped, out-mucked, out-defended, out-whatever-you-want-to-call-it Penn State to the tune of a closely fought 61-56 victory at the Schott. Neither team was shooting well, but neither team was turning the ball over much or commanding the glass. Both teams just missed a lot of shots.

The loss at Wisconsin where they shot below 20% from thee-point land was clearly not going to improve their AP Poll ranking, but the ugly win over PSU probably didn’t help them all that much, either. With those two games taken into account, Chris Holtmann’s team dropped from No. 16 to No. 19 in this week’s AP Poll.

The Buckeyes should be favored in their next three games, and all three should be viewed as “must wins” if Ohio State wants to jostle for a Big Ten title this season — their first in a decade. OSU will be heavily favored over lowly IUPUI and bottom-feeding Nebraska, before hitting the road against an upstart Minnesota team that has come down to earth a bit lately.

The top-five was shuffled again this week after USC and UCLA lost, and Baylor lost twice. Gonzaga is the new No. 1, followed by Auburn, Arizona, Purdue, and Baylor.

Four other Big Ten teams were ranked this week. They are No. 4 Purdue, No. 8 Wisconsin, No. 14 Michigan State, and No. 17 Illinois.

Iowa and Indiana also received votes but were left outside the top-25.

No. 19 Ohio State’s next game is tomorrow at 7:00 against IUPUI (1-14, 0-6) in Columbus.

You can check out the full poll here: