Ohio State vs. Northwestern Basketball Pick

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NCAA Basketball Pick – February 28th

Even for teams that have to feel good about their chances of getting into the NCAA Tournament, there are always potential roadblocks right up to the very last game of the year that are trying to keep them out of the dance. On Thursday, the Ohio State Buckeyes face one of those stern tests when they take on the Northwestern Wildcats in Evanston.

The Bucks are in great shape right now, as they have their 20 wins and plenty of signature victories to bolster their resume. The squad is really playing like more of a team, as players like F Evan Ravenel, G Aaron Craft, and F Lenzelle Smith Jr. are starting to give a helping hand to the team’s leading scorer, F Deshaun Thomas. Thomas is still the focal point though, and he has consistently averaged right around 20 points per game all season long. He’s leading the team right now both in scoring at 19.9 PPG and rebounding at 6.1 boards per game. The key here is whether OSU is going to avoid the trap. The club is coming off of huge home wins against the Michigan State Spartans and Minnesota Golden Gophers, wins which probably put the team in the dance for sure. Up next? The Indiana Hoosiers in Bloomington.

The problem that the Wildcats have though, is that they just don’t have enough warm bodies to compete. They rank 305th in the nation in scoring at 61.1 points per game, and they only have two players on the team that are healthy and are averaging even remotely close to double digits in scoring per game. Over the course of the last three games, Northwestern has scored just 41, 41, and 43 points, and there really hasn’t been all that much in the way of consistency on either end of the court. G Reggie Hearn is about all that is keeping this team going. Hearn is the team’s leading scorer at 13.3 points per game, and he is also the only shooter on the team knocking down more than 40.8 percent of his shots from the field. Next in line is C Alex Olah, who also happens to get a ton of shots blocked and shoots just 50.0 percent from the charity stripe.

Prediction:

Ohio State is in the perfect trap spot, as we discussed before, and that’s the only reason that we are avoiding the Buckeyes in this one. We can’t back Northwestern either, knowing that the Cats are such a wreck. However, until the Wildcats show us that they can score 55+ points in a game again, there is just no way that they are going to be playing games beyond ‘totals’ like this one. Ohio State 58 – Northwestern 50