When Ohio State takes on UMass-Lowell for its second nonconference warm-up to begin the season on Sunday, the certainty of a win may be less in question than whether or not the Buckeyes can outdo the 20-point margin of victory with which they dispatched the River Hawks by a season ago.
If No. 23 Ohio State (1-0) comes out like it did against Illinois State in its season opener Wednesday –– a game in which the Buckeyes started with a 22-0 run –– things could quickly be over before they begin for Pat Duquette’s UMass-Lowell (1-1) team in this contest at the Covelli Center.
However, the past few days have yielded upsets, close calls and unpredictabilities abound in the world of college hoops, and UMass-Lowell just so happens to hold a win over a team that claimed maybe the biggest upset of the year thus far.
The River Hawks, who return two of their top-three scorers from a season ago in senior guard Obadiah Noel and sophomore forward Connor Withers, opened their year with a 76-68 win over San Francisco on Wednesday.
That might not jump off the page at you during a typical season, but the Dons went on to knock off Virginia, the No. 4 team in the country, on Saturday, a win that makes the River Hawks’ own look quite a bit more impressive in retrospect.
Virginia isn’t the only heavily favored college basketball team to have struggled during the season’s opening days though.
Syracuse eked out just a one-point win over the Bryant Bulldogs on Friday, and in the Big Ten, No. 8 Illinois barely snuck out of its matchup with Ohio with a narrow 77-75 victory of its own on Friday.
It’s not impossible that UMass-Lowell could give the Buckeyes a run for their money in the wake of some surprising results in the world of college basketball as of late, but if Ohio State resembles its Wednesday form, it will be highly unlikely.
Not to mention, UMass-Lowell went on to drop its second game of the season to Illinois State on Saturday, the team that the Buckeyes blew the lid off just a few days ago.
Redshirt junior forward Justice Sueing was even better than anticipated in his debut performance for the Buckeyes, shooting 8-for-9 from the field to finish with a team-high 19 points as Ohio State rolled to a near-30-point win.
The other standout performer for the Buckeyes was sophomore forward E.J. Liddell, a top 50 recruit in Chris Holtmann’s 2019 class that finished his freshman year strong and appears to have made significant strides in year two.
The athletic 6-foot-7 forward played with an aggressive edge on offense and an emphasis towards scoring that often went unseen during his freshman season, and the result was a 16-point performance in which Liddell played just 23 minutes.
The Buckeyes got off to a red-hot start without great games turned in by either of their starting guards on Wednesday, as redshirt senior CJ Walker and junior Duane Washington –– Ohio State’s returning points leader from a season ago –– combined to shoot just 7-for-20 in Game 1.
That pair may have their hands full with UMass Lowell's Noel, the 6-foot-4 guard that is fresh off a 35-point game on Saturday, but if Walker and Washington get their offense going, it could be a long day for the River Hawks.
Ohio State and UMass-Lowell tip off at noon at the Covelli Center on Sunday.
