By: VR Bryant (UWeekly.com) —
As I’ve said many times before in many different instances, expectations in sports are dangerous. They’re dangerous to fans, to teams and to coaches. The nature of college basketball is such that teams have ups and downs, peaks and valleys.

Nevertheless, we allow ourselves to believe that certain teams and certain players have certain abilities that ought to yield certain results. Even within the scope of a single game, we can observe their exploits and say confidently, “This is what he/they is/are capable of,”. And often we wind up saying, “Why can’t he/they do that all the time?”

After the high of besting Michigan on the road after trailing with under eight minutes to go, the young Bucks sank down to seventh in the conference after getting routed by Illinois in Champaign and crumpling under the Spartans’ 52-point second half rush.

Now at 3-4 in the Big Ten, Ohio State is looking up at the bulk of the league with eleven games to go. Certainly not past the point of no return, but after such a fast and encouraging start (9-0), it’s difficult to get past some of this team’s shortcomings that have led to its losing five of the last nine.

In fairness, as I’ve said, the Buckeye tournament resume has been solid since game six. With the Michigan win, OSU has four wins against tournament-bound teams, only one of which came at home. Nothing – not even two straight double-digit losses – can take that away.

But Sunday’s game was like looking at the team through a microscope. As the season drags on and weighs on these players, Thad Matta’s sparse seven-man rotation is starting to play as thin on the court as it looks on paper.

The energy in the first half was great, as the Buckeyes seemed to have shaken off the rough loss at Illinois and led by as many as 13 points before heading into the locker room up by five to the seventh-ranked team in the country.

The wheels came off midway through the second stanza, and the complete lack of presence on both sides of the glass was the tale of the tape. Ohio State got out-rébounded 33 to 18, and not even Propecia pill whithout prescription hitting 10 of 20 three-point attempts was enough to hold off Coach Izzo’s squad.

Sure, Durrell Summers had a career game, and you can’t always necessarily account for such things. Sometimes guys get hot (see last year’s game at Iowa). But while Izzo shuffled 11 players in, nine of whom played 11 minutes or more, Matta played only seven, all but one of whom (P.J. Hill) played at least 24.

This team looked tired- plain and simple. And after losing David Lighty and Anthony Crater, it’s no wonder.

The waters get a little less choppy in the immediate future, with three of the next four games at home, the lone road contest coming against the still-winless Indiana Hoosiers. After that, the boys get a week off before traveling to Wisconsin and Northwestern. Somewhere in there, Lighty is slated to return.

That six game stretch may end up being the most telling of all. Either Ohio State crawls back into the conference picture or slides deeper into a funk from which they simply may not recover. We shall see.

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