Ohio State basketball needs to win the easy ones

Let me start out by saying that no game is an easy one in the Big Ten conference. The Ohio State basketball team knows that already. They know that every single time they play someone else in their conference, no matter where the game is played, it’s going to be a dogfight.

With that being said, the Buckeyes have to bring home the winnable games on their schedule. Tomorrow’s game against Minnesota would fit that mold. The Golden Gophers have lost four out of their last five games and have only one win inside Big Ten play.

This is a game that good teams win. If the Ohio State basketball team wants to make some noise in this conference, this is the type of game they have to win on the road. That’s especially true when they have to face Purdue on Sunday in Mackey Arena. They have to beat the bad teams.

Minnesota is about as bad as a team gets in the Big Ten. They still have 11 wins on the season, so they’re not abysmal. They just have struggled against the better competition once conference play started. Ohio State is the more talented team and should be able to win the game.

If Ohio State walks out of The Barn with a loss, that tells us that this team isn’t ready to make any noise when it counts. Good teams win games like this, even if it ends up being a struggle to do so. Chris Holtmann will never say it out loud, but this is a must-win game.

We’ll see if this is something the Buckeyes are able to handle. Minnesota is a really tough place to play no matter how bad the team is. Crowd noise might be an issue.