Ohio State, North Carolina find different ways to nab big victories and potentially save their seasons

NEW YORK — The sounds coming outside of the Ohio State locker room at 8:25 p.m. after defeating No. 4 Kentucky 85-65 were boisterous and booming. These Buckeyes needed a win like this.

The sounds surrounding the North Carolina locker room a little less than three hours prior, on the other side of Madison Square Garden, were ones of appreciation and relief after rallying to defeat No. 18 UCLA 76-74. These Tar Heels really needed a win like this.

On one of the most loaded sports days of 2024, college basketball wound up providing two different but nonetheless equally notable upsets at the World’s Most Famous Arena in the CBS Sports Classic. These results could prove pivotal for two big-time programs looking to alter the trajectories of their respective seasons. UNC and Ohio State scheduled ambitiously, and for the most part, they’d both failed heretofore. 

Saturday offered one last chance before league play dominates the schedule to salvage their nonconference résumés. Salvage did they ever. 

Consider: Kentucky was one of the best stories of the first seven weeks of the season. No. 18 UCLA was similarly surprising — and just as intimidating. Those two blue bloods were poised to punctuate their notable nonconference runs by finishing off two seemingly floundering teams in the Buckeyes and Tar Heels.

Nope. 

Kentucky and its elite offense was slowed down by Ohio State. The Buckeyes led by double digits for the majority of the second half.

UCLA and its elite defense was overtaken late by North Carolina. The Tar Heels were down by as many as 16 but found another way for another dramatic late-game run.

The CBS Sports Classic is one of the premier events of the December calendar in college hoops, and over the years it’s provided a fun assortment of surprising plot twists. I’d argue this year was the biggest two-fer upset situation we’ve ever seen in the 11 iterations of the event. March is a way off, but it’s not that far off. And through seven weeks, the Buckeyes and Tar Heels combined for nine losses, some of them cringeworthy-bad. If UNC (7-5) and/or OSU (8-4) wind up making the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the wins on Saturday against No. 18 UCLA and No. 4 Kentucky will go a good way toward making that a reality. 

Buckeyes bounce back after rout vs. Auburn

Ohio State entered the day with just one Quad 1 win, its season-opener over Texas. Since then it’s had a loss by 14 to No. 12 Texas A&M, a home defeat to Pitt, a 24-point drubbing at Maryland and the 38-point evisceration against mighty No. 2  Auburn in Atlanta last weekend. The team looked adrift. 

And without senior guard Meechie Johnson — who’s gone away now due to personal reasons — Saturday’s game seemed all the more difficult. Kentucky entered the weekend averaging 91 points and was wearing teams out by running them down and sprinting away from the competition. It didn’t look like a setup for a shorthanded OSU team to pull off one of its biggest upsets in the past five years. 

Ohio State beating Kentucky feels like one of the more surprising results of the season. Not because OSU won, but because it won by 20 and killed Kentucky’s spirit with regularity in the second half. The Wildcats never could pull a run together to put the game in doubt. But in the hours leading up to tip-off, Ohio State knew it was getting key pieces back and had the plan to exploit Kentucky’s defensive weaknesses.

“We felt like, going into this game, we belonged here,” OSU coach Jake Diebler told CBS Sports. “We needed to prove and answer some questions, and we were honest about those. And I thought our guys did a great job.”

On a day where the overwhelming majority of OSU fans were focused on their football team’s CFP game vs. Tennessee back in Columbus, the basketball fellas redefined what they can be under Diebler, who’s in his first full season running the Buckeyes.

The star of the game was veteran guard Bruce Thornton, who had a career-best 30 points.

“Thornton controlled the entire game, the entire team, every single facet of the game,” UK coach Mark Pope said. 

Thanks to Aaron Bradshaw and Ques Glover returning to play, the Bucks didn’t let Kentucky play super up-tempo and wound up holding one of the best offenses in college basketball to a mere 65 points. What’s more, UK was anemic from 3-point range, shooting only 4-of-22. The 20-point loss was the worst of Pope’s Kentucky career. This was the first dud for him as UK’s coach, but as a player he never lost by more than 13. Kentucky was a bizarre 7 for 23 on layups, too.

“We embraced being on this stage,” Diebler told CBS Sports. “I’m a big believer that Ohio State basketball as a program belongs on this stage and there’s no shortcuts to getting it there. It’s been there for stretches throughout the history of the program. We’re fighting to get it back. And so we, as a group, wanted to embrace the most famous arena in the world against a high-level opponent.” 

Getting Bradshaw, a Kentucky transfer, and Glover back into the mix (Bradshaw was out due to a university investigation  of a domestic violence incident that he was subsequently cleared of, while Glover sat due to an ankle injury) on Saturday was just what Ohio State needed to show its ceiling is higher than most realized. Thornton was a stud — his control of the game was exception — but Diebler told me this group is going to have a chance to show more of this with most of the roster being available to practice together, to be together, moving forward.

“There’s so much newness in college basketball now that everybody’s gelling and building and growing at different paces, and there’s a lot of factors that go into that,” Diebler said. “If we can get a consistent stretch of having the same guys out there practicing every day, it’ll really help us.” 

The Buckeyes will look to turn the corner by taking advantage of having four of their next six games at home.

Carolina’s comeback shows character

As for the Tar Heels, this is feeling like a redux of 2022-23. The key moving forward will be to avoid that catastrophe of that season, when the Tar Heels went from No. 1 in October to missing the NCAA Tournament altogether, a first in college hoops history.

At 7-5, there’s a lot of ways this can go. Two years ago, UNC won a last-second play to stave off early season worries. This group is built differently, but the consistent factor is RJ Davis. He’s in his fifth season. On Saturday he had 17 points. To hear him talk, it was like he was reflecting on a full season already.

“The first 12 games, it seems like we’ve been in March Madness games,” Davis said. “That’s what it’s going to be like at the end of the year when we’re playing against tough teams all the way to the wire and being able to execute, being able to get that extra rebound, that extra stop. I think that’s what we’re starting to get the hang of a little bit.”

I saw this UNC team in Maui, when it went 1-2 and only got the one win vs. Dayton after overcoming a 21-point deficit to win buy two. Until Saturday, that was UNC’s only Quad 1 win. In beating UCLA, North Carolina got its first nonconference win over a high-major program in its 12th game of the season. 

“We were down in the second half. There was no panic,” North Carolina coach Hubert Davis said. “It was not a situation where we’re trying to make a 16-point play to cut it but even make it tied, and it was just a possession on possession type of approach, and then when we got it close, just understanding how important little details are. It’s because we’ve been in those situations against really good competition that allowed us to have the confidence to come back and then also the experiences of what we needed to do to finish it out.”

This was made possible because Ian Jackson, a New York City native, had his breakout game. A career-high 24 points to pace UNC, which was able to clear 75 points on an UCLA team that was allowing less than 58 per night. Jackson shined on MSG’s stage, a place he’d dreamed of being for years. 

“Shocking that this is the first time Ian has ever played in the Garden,” Hubert Davis said afterward. 

The fact Carolina needed Jackson to pop out his shell (among other facts, but Jackson’s scoring knack was vital to the Heels winning Saturday) is equal parts encouraging and troublesome. He dropped 24 despite coming off the bench. He’s yet to start a game. 

Once again, UNC got behind early. This time, it didn’t cost the team. Five times this season, it has. 

UNC has to — has to, has to, has to — fix its slow-start problem. In fact, calling it a “problem” is underselling the issue. Through 12 games the Tar Heels are -33 in point differential in the first half the season. They’re averaging 37.1 points before halftime and 47.8 after. They’re shooting 26.5% from 3-point range in the opening 20 minutes, 35.8% after intermission. The overall before/after halftime shooting splits: 41.8% to 51.9%. This is a crisis. 

Maybe Jackson should be starting over veteran backcourt mates Seth Trimble or Elliott Cadeau. Maybe the four-guard look should be the way to start, just to see if the change of pace makes a difference. Carolina’s limited because it lacks frontcourt presence and typical UNC dependability on the boards, but Davis is paid millions to coach up one of the blue bloods in the sport and figure out a way to have success, no matter the circumstances. This is his team, his roster, it’s on him to get as creative as necessary to avoid a repeat of two years ago. 

The good news: Davis is open to it. And after flirting with maybe starting Jackson in recent games, that change might be coming soon.

“We may not have tremendous size, but we do have athleticism,” Davis said. “So you pick up full court, speeds teams up, we can get steals and deflections and get the pace that we want.”

Because the ACC is mediocre again this season (ranking fifth in the metrics and seventh in overall winning percentage), the Tar Heels will almost certainly need to finish in the top two of the league be in position to comfortably receive an at-large bid. And because the ACC is down, UNC is only projected to play six more Quad 1 games the rest of the way. 

“I’m just so happy for these guys,” Davis told me as we walked back to the locker room, a few paces behind Jackson. “I wanted them to be able to fight through this and get this kind of win. That’s all. I’m happy for them.”

Getting the rotation right will be key. UNC has the talent to avoid having a replay of what happened two years ago, but it starts with getting the right kinds of starts right away. As we head into 2025, few teams are as different, and unpredictable, as the Tar Heels.