March Madness – (10) Ohio State Buckeyes vs (2) Arizona Wildcats
By Zack Garrison in News
Updated: January 17, 2018 at 9:40 am ESTPublished:
(10) Ohio State Buckeyes vs (2) Arizona Wildcats (-9, 131 o/u)
The No. 10 Ohio State Buckeyes (24-10, 11-7 Big Ten) needed overtime and a stellar performance from freshman D’Angelo Russell to overcome the No. 7 VCU Rams on Thursday. Now the competition ramps up as the Buckeyes face the No. 2 Arizona Wildcats (32-3, 16-2 Pac-12) tonight at the Moda Center in Portland (5:15 PM Eastern).
Russell, a likely top-five pick in the 2015 NBA draft, had 28 points and six rebounds in the win over VCU. “He’s a winner. The kid loves to win. He’s going to do whatever he can to win basketball games,” Ohio State coach Thad Matta said about Russell.
The Buckeyes covered the spread as 3.5-point dogs against the Rams. They’ll be underdogs again tonight, sitting at +9 in the spread at the moment.
Ohio State’s inconsistency is a big part of the large spread (the Buckeyes have lost four of their last nine), but the Wildcats’ prowess is an equal part of the equation.
Arizona comes in on a 12-game win streak, including a 93-72 victory over the Texas Southern in the Round of 32. Sophomore forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson had 23 points in the high-scoring win.
The outcome was never really in doubt, but Wildcats’ head coach Sean Miller was still disappointed that his usually defensively stout team gave up 70+ points.
“I think the point is that we have to get back to being an excellent defensive team, which takes a lot of effort and concentration,” said Miller. “We certainly can do it. But whoever we play in the next round we know is going to be a formidable opponent. We want to make sure when that game ends we feel good about what we did, especially on defense.”
These two programs met for the last time back in 2013 with a 73-70 win by Ohio State. (Arizona covered the spread as 3.5-point dogs.) Ohio State has the talent to hang with the athletic Wildcats, making Ohio State (+9) look like the better value.
(Photo credit:Â Beaverbasketball (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)
Sports Writer
Zack is a tour guide whose favorite sports are football, baseball, and golf. He enjoys giving obnoxious commentary during games and hopes to some day write a book about sports. His favorite underdog victory was the Diamondbacks beating the Yankees in game 7 of the World Series.
