No one ever said that Ohio State’s late Friday night matchup with Iowa State in round one of the NCAA tournament would be easy. The Cyclones are a very good team, fresh off a Big 12 title run, and the Buckeyes are, well, inconsistent at best, just plain bad at worst. On top of the natural mismatches that come with a 6v11 game in the tournament, Ohio State also apparently has one more thing working against it, according to Erik Haslam of haslametrics.com:
Momentum. Specifically, the fact that Ohio State is one of the least hot teams in the country, coming in at 346th in the momentum metric.