Ohio State basketball falls in latest ESPN bracketology

Now that the Ohio State basketball roster appears sorted out, we’re starting to get updated preseason rankings and even some adjusted early lookaheads to 2022 NCAA Tournament seeding projections.

And … whenever we talk about NCAA Tournament projections, you can’t do so without the name Joe Lunardi, the master ESPN bracketologist. He just updated the projections he has been doing routinely since the Baylor Bears cut down the nets. And, he has an update on Ohio State. Cover your eyes because it’s not pleasant for those who have OSU ringtones set on their smartphones.

Most analysts had been working under the assumption that both Duane Washington and E.J. Liddell would return to the Buckeyes for another season, but only Liddell withdrew his name from the NBA draft. Because of that, most aren’t quite as bullish on OSU’s upcoming season.

Lunardi feels the same and has dropped Ohio State from a No. 2 to a No. 3 seed. It’s still a pretty good outlook, but that would put the Buckeyes somewhere in the range of a ranking around 13 through 16 in the national polls once all the smoke clears instead of a top-five or top-10 narrative.

It’s way too early to get too excited about these types of things since we’re still a few months away from the season starting, but Lundardi has the Buckeyes facing 14th-seeded Southern Utah in the West bracket.

You can get a look at the rest of what Lunardi projects by visiting his ongoing Bracketology page on ESPN.com.

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