Watch Bruce Thornton see his Ohio State-NCAA Tournament dreams finally come true

As Drake would say, ''sometimes it's the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination' and for Bruce Thornton, this day had been a long time coming.

Thornton has been through it all at Ohio State while becoming the Buckeyes' all-time leading scorer — coaching changes, tournament snubs, disappointing seasons and so much more, but he's stuck it out in Columbus with the belief that a day like today would happen. So when Jake Diebler, overcome with excitement, gave a shoulder embrace to a smiling Thornton after the Buckeyes were officially in the big dance, it made all the adversity worth it.

College sports have changed a ton over the past few years. It's still great, but it's different now. Players move around a lot more. It's a regular occurrence for a program to have a completely different starting five from year-to-year. But Thornton has been a Buckeye since day one. He could've went and chased a tournament opportunity elsewhere, but he wanted to do it at Ohio State, as a senior, Thornton will get to lead the Buckeyes into the big dance.

Buckeyes will go dancing for the first time since 2022

Ohio State was knocked out of the Big Ten tournament in the quarterfinals after a hard-fought 71-67 loss to Michigan, but the Buckeyes will be entering the dance with a lot of momentum, and it's something that has Thornton believing that the best may still be yet to come.

"How we've been playing as a team, how we've been practicing, how we've been preparing, how we've been showing up on these game days," Thornton said. "From everything we've been doing day by day to prepare ourselves for the best Ohio State team we possibly can. And I'm glad we just showed it to the world."

There will be plenty of time to talk about how the Buckeyes match up with their first-round opponent, TCU, and what they need to do in order to make a run in the tournament. But right now, it's time to celebrate Thornton and everything he's sacrificed to help Ohio State get there.