Ohio State's NCAA Tournament hopes are all but gone.
The Buckeyes entered Friday among the next four teams out of the tourney per ESPN's Joe Lunardi and made just one of the 105 bracket projections aggregated by Bracketmatrix.com. There are clear separators, be they Q2 record, NET ranking or even a head-to-head win in Texas A&M's case, between Ohio State and the last teams in in those same projections.
With those projections and résumé differences in mind, Ohio State's hard-fought 77-74 loss to No. 13 Illinois killed what chance the Buckeyes had to make up ground and make the Big Dance.