As Wisconsin center Brian Butch fell to the floor in an attempt to secure a rebound, bodies went flying everywhere as he tumbled over a teammate and an Ohio State player.
Butch suffered a nasty dislocation and fracture on the play, and the injury was gruesome to watch on live television.
The play, however, was simply a microcosm of Sunday’s disjointed crucial Big Ten battle between the No. 1 (in the AP poll) Wisconsin Badgers and the No. 1 (in the coaches poll) Ohio State Buckeyes.
Thad Matta’s Ohio State squad clinched the Big Ten regular season title with the win, and gave his team the inside track for a potential No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, but the actual game provided little insight in separating the top teams in the country.
The tightly contested display on Sunday supplied little useful information in separating the two rivals because both teams played so poorly in such a scrutinized, important game.
Sunday’s game between Wisconsin and Ohio State marked the first time Big Ten squads had faced off as No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, at the time of their meeting. The regular season championship was also on the line, as well as the all-important NCAA seeding implications.
And it seems both teams buckled under the weight of those expectations. Last year, fans and media alike cried foul as UCLA slugged it out with Memphis en route to its first Final Four appearance in 11 years. The Badgers and Buckeyes, however, made the Bruins and Tigers look like Baryshnikov at the ballet.
Surprisingly, it was not center Greg Oden who emerged as the freshman star for Ohio State, but his high school teammate Mike Conley Jr., who hit a runner in the lane with just four seconds left to lift the Buckeyes to a 49-48 win. He was just about the only player to represent himself well, scoring 11 points with six assists.
Oden was called for traveling three times. Wisconsin senior and player of the year candidate Alando Tucker had an open 3-pointer late in the game with his team down by a point but only hit backboard. Kammron Taylor missed the front-end of a one-and-one opportunity when he could have put the Badgers up three with 20 seconds to go.
Butch’s ugly injury, while highly unfortunate (the junior may be out four to six weeks), seemed to be representative of the run of play Sunday that was at times difficult to watch from an aesthetic standpoint.
The win does put Ohio State in the driver’s seat for a potential No. 1 seed more so because it took care of business while every other contender outside of UCLA lost in the past week. Wisconsin meanwhile still has an excellent opportunity to stake a claim to a top seed as well because its other main competition (Florida and North Carolina) also suffered defeats.
Expect Oden’s Buckeyes and Tucker’s Badgers to face off once more in the Big Ten tournament final March 11 in Chicago. The winner could put itself in a better position for the NCAA Tournament, the only real tournament that matters.
THE TWO FACES OF KANSAS: The No. 3 Jayhawks (25-4) have played a season-long game with themselves of good-Kansas, bad-Kansas.
Although hopes were high in Lawrence at the beginning of the season, and Bill Self had his team teeming with precocious talent, losses to Oral Roberts and DePaul brought back bad-Kansas and much of the Midwest down to earth.
This was the same bad-Kansas that was unable to make it past the first round of the NCAAs in each of the past two seasons, falling to mid-majors Vermont and Bucknell.
Lately though, the Jayhawks have brought back good-Kansas. That team was tabbed as a preseason title favorite, beat No. 1 Florida back in November, and perhaps has the most talented complete roster in the country.
Led by the sophomore triumvirate of Mario Chalmers, Brandon Rush and Julian Wright, Kansas had won its previous six games by an average margin of 27.2 points before eking out a two-point victory at Oklahoma on Monday night.
With Florida inexplicably stumbling down the stretch and UNC suddenly saddled with four conference losses, Bill Self likely needs his team to be good-Kansas for another 10 days or so and hold serve in the Big 12 for a No. 1 seed on Selection Sunday.