The Ohio State Buckeyes play against Dayton in the first NCAA Tournament game for March Madness on Thursday in the first second round and the matchup starts at 12:15 pm ET and comes live from the First Niagara Center in Buffalo and the CBS game on TV will be streaming from the March Madness website from Turner and has OSU looking to advance.
Ohio State comes into the game as a six seed and Dayton is at number 11 and this battle for Ohio comes after the Buckeyes went 25-9 this season, but they struggled in their own conference and ended up 10-8 on the season in the Big Ten. Ohio state comes into the game after losing against Michigan in the Big Ten tournament and that game saw Aaron Craft add six assists and seven rebounds to lead the team and he will be a key player for the Buckeyes as they get set to start the NCAA tournament and he has been a major reason for their success over the past few years.
The Big Ten was one of the best conferences in the nation this season and they were very deep and now teams like Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State and OSU are all in the mix and they are all expecting to have nice runs this season. The Buckeyes come into the game as a low scoring team on offense, but their defense has been very good and they are averaging just less than 70 points per game and they are ranked in the top 15 nationally in defense with just 59 points allowed per game. The team is averaging over seven steals per game and they have over four blocks per game and that defense is going to be key for the team as they try to erase any bad memories from the Big Ten season and their struggles.
The team had a very tough run with five losses in four games and that came after the team went undefeated into January and it started with a loss to Michigan State in overtime. The team then lost to Iowa and Minnesota before falling to Nebraska and Penn State and that knocked the team out of the top 25 for a time before they bounced back. The team lost all their games against Michigan this season, but they did get some nice wins against ranked teams in Marquette, Michigan State, Wisconsin and Iowa and now they will try and keep things going against Dayton on Thursday.
Thad Matta knows that the Battle of Ohio will not be a walk in the park and he has been preparing his team for this matchup and it comes as he faces off against a friend in Dayton coach Archie Miller. Dayton comes in from the Atlantic 10 and the team averaged over 70 points per game and they were 23-10 this season and 10-6 in their conference.
Check here for the Ohio State and Dayton live coverage for March Madness.