Ohio Bobcats Basketball

The state of Ohio is enjoying unprecedented success in the NCAA Tournament.

For the first time ever, a quarter of the Sweet 16 is from one state. No. 2 Ohio State, No. 6 Cincinnati, No. 10 Xavier and No. 13 Ohio all play in different conferences and win with different styles of ball, but all of them are connected in one way or another.

Buckeyes coach Thad Motta came from Xavier, Ohio Bobcats coach John Groce was an assistant for Ohio State, and the Bearcats and Muskies may hate each other more than any two teams in the nation.

But all of the Ohio love can’t last.

It’s impossible for all four to advance since Ohio State and Cincinnati play in the East Region on Thursday, but I do see two teams advancing from the 17^th state to enter the union.

No. 2 Ohio State 67, No. 6 Cincinnati 62

Did you watch the Bearcats win over No. 3 Florida State?

It was one of the most physical games I’ve ever seen and the Bearcats prevailed because they were more mentally tough.

Now they play a Buckeyes team that is also predicated on physicality and good defense, but with much more offensive firepower.

The ‘Cats don’t have a shooter like Aaron Craft or a scorer like William Buford and that’s going to ultimately doom them when baskets become such a premium down the stretch.

I have a feeling Jared Sullinger is able to handle the bully that has become Yancy Gates and ensure his team doesn’t get bounced in the Sweet 16 for the third-straight year.

Fun fact: The game in Boston will mark the 50^th anniversary of Cincinnati beating Ohio State for the second-straight time in the National Championship.

No. 1 North Carolina 75, No. 13 Ohio 63

As a proud OU alum it pains me to say that the talent difference in this matchup is much too hard to ignore.

Despite likely losing Kendall Marshall to a broken wrist, the Tar Heels size in the post is going to suffocate the undersized Ohio bigs.

The only way the Bobcats can stay with the Tar Heels is by shooting a white-hot percentage from three-point range while DJ Cooper destroys the backups for Marshall.  

No. 10 Xavier 65, No. 3 Baylor 64

The big upset of the Sweet 16 will belong to the Muskies.

Tu Holloway is one of the 10 best players in the nation and is shooting over 50-percent from three-point range in the tournament. This has allowed him to attack off the dribble and create wide-open looks for his sharp-shooting teammates.

There is no doubt that Perry Jones III and Co. is terrific defensively in the post, but the guards are susceptible to speedy opponents, and Holloway and teammate Mark Lyons fit the bill.

The Bears have been incredibly inconsistent this season and endure painfully long offensive draughts far too often.  I see Xavier going on a monster run at some point to really distance themselves.

They already have two appearances in the Elite Eight since 2004, and this non-BCS power is more than capable of getting back there.

Click here for the updated bracket

Upsets are what make this wonderful NCAA Tournament great. The Norfolk State and Lehigh miracles keep us coming back for more.

But now we're past the first weekend. We're past the pretenders and the teams that didn't deserve to be here. We move on to the teams the truly deserve to be here and will leave everything out there to get to New Orleans.

But even though the remaining teams are settled in, it doesn't mean that there aren't opportunities for some shocking results by the time the Thursday games are done.

Here are two upsets that could leave us in awe:

(13) Ohio Bobcats over (1) UNC Tar Heels, Midwest Region

The Ohio Bobcats have a great chance at becoming the first No. 13 seed to qualify for the Elite Eight. Their only obstacle is the North Carolina Tar Heels.

The Bobcats are the real Cinderella team of the tournament, being one of two teams left that are mid-majors (the other being Xavier). They came in as the No. 13 seed, but have played well enough to be considered a top team.

Ohio is led by junior point guard D.J. Cooper. He leads the team in points and assists, averaging 14.9 points and 5.7 assists per game.

Ohio will be playing the Heels at the best possible time, going against an injured Kendall Marshall, or even a UNC team without their star point guard.

Marshall broke his wrist during his game against Creighton and had to get surgery on his non-shooting hand. With the limited work that Marshall can do if he even plays, Cooper will have a big advantage.

If you add in the obvious pain that one of UNC's other stars, John Henson, has in his wrist when he plays, Carolina could be the next victim in an upset-ridden tournament.

(11) NC State Wolfpack over (2) Kansas Jayhawks, Midwest Region

Yes, if my picks are correct, then we will have an 11 vs. 13 Elite Eight, which would be the first time in history that two double-digit teams met this far in the tournament.

But North Carolina State could do their part to make that happen. Calling the Wolfpack an 11 seed or Cinderella just doesn’t seem fitting because they’re better than that and they showed it against Georgetown.

C.J. Leslie was one of three players to score 14 for the Wolfpack along with Scott Wood and C.J. Williams. It wasn’t their best shooting night, evident by the 37 percent they shot from the field, but they were relentless in getting to the charity strike and knocking down the freebies.

They made 19 free throws, which was more than the Hoyas attempted. The Wolfpack can look at what Purdue did defensively as a blueprint of how to play against the Jayhawks in the Sweet 16.

The guards will have to step up again in the Sweet 16 against N.C. State for the Jayhawks, since Thomas Robinson is going to have his hands full against a stout Wolfpack frontline.

The Wolfpack’s confidence is at an all-time high, and I expect their balanced play to get them the upset victory over Kansas.

The Ohio Bobcats have a great chance at upsetting the North Carolina Tar Heels.

The Bobcats are the Cinderella team of the tournament. They came in as the No. 13 seed, but have played well enough to be considered a top team.

Ohio is led by their junior point guard D.J. Cooper. He leads the team in points and assists averaging 14.9 points and 5.7 assists per game.

Cooper will be going against an injured Kendall Marshall. Marshall broke his wrist during his game against Creighton and had to get surgery on his non-shooting hand. With the limited work that Marshall can do if he even plays, Cooper will have a big advantage.

Marshall will have trouble getting around Ohio's pick and roll and will not be able to reach for deflections as much with the hurt wrist. Cooper will be able to get through the lane and cause the Tar Heels to help defensively, which will lead to open shots.

Also, Nick Kellogg will be a key factor in another upset win for Ohio. He is the best three-point shooter for the Bobcats, shooting at 41 percent behind the arc. Kellogg will be another player who will have a better game due to Marshall's injury. Kellogg will be open around the perimeter when help defense covers the attacking Cooper.

Kellogg has proven he can hit the big three when needed as he did against South Florida. Expect more of the same from Kellogg as North Carolina has had trouble defending the three at times this season.

The Bobcats have been shooting the ball well, which is good for any team. However, it is especially good going against North Carolina. The Tar Heels are great at defending the low post with Tyler Zeller and John Henson.

Henson is also coming off a wrist injury, but seemed to be fine in the win over Creighton. He had four blocked shots and was a force down low. Ohio's great shooting ability will make them able to stay away from Henson and Zeller as much as they can as they hit mid-to-long-range jumpers.

If Ohio can stop the transition game for the Tar Heels, they should be able to win this game. The transition game is where North Carolina is at its best. Ohio will struggle to run in transition with the injury to Marshall and may have to rely on Harrison Barnes to create an open shot in the half court.

The Bobcats have a great opportunity to make it to the Elite Eight this season and could be well on their way to making their first Final Four appearance.

Athens, OH, home to Ohio University, a quaint school with a big reputation that hasn't seen anything like this basketball team since 1964. And even that team can't compare.

Ohio University's men's basketball team is moving on to the Sweet 16 for the first time in nearly 50 years, and they're playing with the type of swagger that has made them an infectious team to watch.

Now, normally, I stick to scribbling about the NBA—I know it, I live it and I breathe it—but this is something so near and dear to my heart that I can't bear to keep quiet about it.

Call it the love of the underdog, call it the love of my school. But what it really is is the love a community, of which the Bobcats are a huge part of.

Living in Athens for the past four years brings you into a community setting that big cities just can't rival. It's why so many people want to stick around after graduating, and why so many people keep coming back. Growing up in Columbus brought me close to Ohio State, but as I speak to you today, no team is closer to me than my Bobcats.

As a part of a community that nobody seems to speak positively of, these Bobcats are shedding a positive light on what is a great corner of Ohio. This is showing off a hard-working and slightly lucky shade of green that emits from a city of just over 20,000 people (not including the semi-permanent college population).

Playing the role of giant killers for the second time in three years, Ohio took down Michigan in the second round when few people gave them much of a chance (though a few more than back in 2010 when the Bobcats took down Georgetown). Now, after a rough battle with South Florida, Ohio is going onto the Sweet 16 to take on what might be their toughest opponent in two years (they were throttled by Kansas in 2010).

It's easy to look at this team and think that there's no way they can take down North Carolina, even with an injury to John Henson and, now, Kendall Marshall. It just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

We're talking about a team whose tallest everyday player is possibly shorter than UNC's small forward, Harrison Barnes. 

This is a team with 14 guys just looking to graduate and move on to the real world, going up against a team with at least five guys looking to make it to the NBA (two of which should be first-round picks in this year's draft). However, none of that will matter to the Bobcats when they go to St. Louis on Friday.

The theme of this year's tournament has been the lower seeds not having the "we're just happy to be here" mentality. Norfolk State has showed it, as has Lehigh, VCU, NC State and Colorado—but nobody has showed it like Ohio.

Sure, North Carolina has taken down Michigan State, Wisconsin, Virginia and Duke at one point this season, but for one shining moment, who knows what can happen?

All I know is this Bobcats team is not just happy to be in the Sweet 16, and they're going to play the game of their lives this Friday. They don't mind being a long-shot, and they don't mind being on the big stage playing the one-seeded Tar Heels. At this point, the only thing they mind would be taking a flight back to Athens. They want to celebrate with their people, but not quite yet.

In Coop we trust.

The Ohio Bobcats have already proven they can handle a big-name powerhouse in the NCAA tournament, taking down fourth-seeded Michigan in the second round. Tonight, they’ll get a chance to show how they deal with facing a fellow underdog.

The 13th-seeded Bobcats will take on 12th-seeded South Florida, the only winner of a First Four game that survived the round of 64. South Florida has won twice in this tournament despite having one of the nation’s worst offenses—leading scorer Augustus Gilchrist averages a paltry 9.6 points a night.

The Bulls’ punishing defense will be a very different challenge for Ohio than finesse-oriented Michigan, but the Bobcats will use the same answer they did in beating the Wolverines: D.J. Cooper. Ohio’s superlative junior point guard had 21 points and five assists in beating Michigan, and even the fearsome South Florida D won’t keep Cooper from putting up numbers.

As physical as the Bulls are, 6'1" PG Anthony Collins isn’t going to be able to body up on Cooper to any great effect. Cooper’s ability to penetrate defenses and create opportunities for his teammates has keyed the Ohio offense all year, and that formula won’t change against South Florida.

Just as important, Cooper is an outstanding defender who averages 2.3 steals per game. South Florida has already shown how easy it is to get them out of sync on offense—they shot 3-of-27 in the first half against Temple—and Cooper’s disruptiveness at the point will make life miserable for South Florida all day.

Obviously, the Bulls have survived wretched offensive performances before, but they won’t be able to get past the combination of another lousy scoring effort and the points Cooper puts up. Look for the Bobcats to make their first Sweet 16 trip since 1964.

The party in Athens can be heard from miles around and will probably go on until they play Tennessee Saturday.

Nobody gave this team a snowball's chance to come within sniffing distance of beating the mighty Hoyas of Georgetown, yet the green and white are celebrating their first NCAA Tournament win since 1983.

A team that could only be described as, at best, the other, other, other, other basketball team in Ohio, after Ohio State, Xavier, and Cincinnati, just showed that they can hang with the big boys.

The Hoyas were too big for the Bobcats to beat, yet Ohio held their own, grabbing 24 rebounds to Georgetown's 31.

Georgetown was on too much of a hot streak to be cooled down, and yes, they did shoot a respectable 50 percent, but the Bobcats shot an astonishing 58 percent from the field and scorched home 13 threes.

ESPN's Joe Lunardi said before the tournament of Ohio, "What an achievement to make the field, but I don't see any way that Ohio U gets through with a first round upset."

The Bobcats did just that and threw the words right back in Lunardi's face with every three-pointer they drained.

They were confident, but not cocky, that they had a chance in this game and played with the poise you would not expect a team that was clobbered by 25 by Pittsburgh in December to have.

An old basketball saying that clearly defines the success of teams in the tournament says that if you live by the three, you die by the three, and it seems that OU has showed the nation exactly how a team can live by the three, even if they are dead before the tip-off.

Not once did I think that this ragtag bunch of scrappy players could come together to beat the giant that is Georgetown, yet for the whole game I sat on the edge of my seat, refusing to get up because it might ruin the team's mojo, and I believed.

They stunned the MAC world when they beat the regular season MAC champion Kent State, they angered the kids in Miami when they beat their rival RedHawks, they went on to upset the MAC Tournament hometown favorites Akron, and now they have showed the nation what they are capable of after handing Georgetown one of their most surprising losses in a while.

The most astonishing thing about this team is that it is so young. The only senior on this team is big man Kenneth Van Kempen. Armon Bassett and DeVaughn Washington are juniors, and little D.J. Cooper is the MAC Freshman of the Year.  This team is surprising this year, but next year they will be downright good.

It completely screwed up my bracket, and I don't care, because this is what college basketball is all about.

So watch out Tennessee, because Cinderella has her dancing shoes on, and she's looking to boogie the night away.

If they do manage to boogie their way past Tennessee, we could be looking at an OU-OSU Sweet 16 matchup. How's that for in-state pandemonium waiting to happen?

Armon Bassett chose the right time to have the game of his life.

The junior guard poured in a career-high 38 points, and the Ohio Bobcats pulled off a stunning upset over top-seeded Kent State, 81-64, in the quarterfinals of the Mid-American Conference tournament Thursday in Cleveland.

Bassett played all 40 minutes and connected on all 16 of his free throws as the Bobcats (19-14) raced out to an early lead, and never looked back.

With Ohio's freshman sensation D.J. Cooper in foul trouble, junior forward DeVaughn Washington was 8-for-8 from the field and had 19 points. Chris Singletary led Kent State (23-9) with 19.

Ohio’s win dashed Kent State’s dream of a spot in the NCAA Tournament. The Flashes will head to the NIT, having earned an automatic bid from their regular-season conference title.

Meanwhile, Akron’s Steve McNees nailed a stunning three-pointer with 0.8 seconds remaining in the first overtime, and the Zips (23-9) outlasted Eastern Michigan for a 97-89 win in Thursday’s third quarterfinal game.

Akron held an identical eight-point lead at the half, and stretched it to 14 with a 6-0 run to start the second stanza. But EMU’s Carlos Medlock got hot and stayed that way, keeping the Eagles (17-15) within striking distance. Medlock finished the game with 42 points.

After McNees’ heroics, the Zips scored the first nine points of the second overtime to seal the victory. McNees, with 18 points, led Akron's five players in double figures.

In the other two quarterfinal games Thursday, Western Michigan’s David Kool warmed up in the second half and finished with 26 points to lead the Broncos to an upset over second-seeded Central Michigan, 69-60, while Miami ran away from Buffalo, 73-59, behind Kenny Hayes’ 27 points.

Matchups for Friday’s semifinal games at Quicken Loans Arena:

(7) Western Michigan vs. (3) Akron, 7 p.m.
(9) Ohio vs. (4) Miami, 9 p.m.

The championship game is scheduled for Saturday at 6 p.m. Complete information, including audio and video of post-game comments and live streaming of games, is available at the tournament website .

What do you get when your shooting guard drops 38 points and your point guard is MAC Freshman of the year? You get the nation's best mid-major back-court and an upset victory over the 1 seed Kent State Golden Flashes in The MAC Tournament.

Well, exactly that happened for the 9 seed Ohio Bobcats in their quarterfinal upset victory of Thursday night's MAC Tournament game. 

Ohio's back-court duo of Junior Armon Bassett and Freshman D.J Cooper were coming off performances in which Bassett had 25 points and Cooper finished with nearly a triple-double of 12 points, 8 assists, and 9 rebounds in the first round of the MAC tournament vs. 8 seed Ball St. 

What these two players did in the first round and quarterfinals seems to happen every night. Bassett is the teams leading scorer with 16.3 points per game and Cooper is the team's second leading scorer, averaging just under 14 points per game in addition to his 6 assists and 5.6 rebounds per game. Yeah, he's a Freshman.

For any of you Big Ten or Indiana fans, you may recognized Bassett because as a Freshman and Sophomore he started for the Indiana Hoosiers and led the Big Ten in 3-pt %. 

How did he land up at Ohio University? After some behavioral problems he was dismissed from the team and after a short stay with UAB in which he didn't play, he decided he wanted to play closer to home so he was heavily recruited by Ohio Head Coach John Groce.

D.J Cooper is the only Freshman point guard not on Kentucky to average double digits in scoring. Pretty amazing. What's even more amazing is that on top of that he still comes up with 6 assists and nearly 6 rebounds per game as well.

These two talented guards make up the the nation's best Mid-Major Back-court. Two more wins in the MAC Tournament and they can finally show the world their talent in the NCAA Tournament.

Up next, a rivalry game for the Ohio Bobcats with Miami (Ohio) in the MAC tournament semifinals. Last time these two teams met, Ohio needed a last second 3-pointer to win 70-68.