A short time ago, before the 9-1 streak was broken last November, you could hear OSU fans lamenting the state of the Michigan rivalry and longing for the day when the Wolverines would return to challenge the Buckeyes like the good old days...or something. “For the Big Ten Conference to be respectable, Michigan has to be good.”, or words to that effect. Okay, I might have been one of those people.

It’s still true. You just don’t hear Buckeye fans mouthing it a lot anymore. There are a lot of indications that Brady Hoke has the Wolverine program back on its feet. An 11-win season, a top five recruiting class, and a BCS bowl win are just a few of them. It’s debatable of course, but it’s important that they believe it. And if their demeanor...and their swagger...and their smack talk after one consecutive victory over the Buckeyes is any indication, they do believe it.

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The Buckeyes kicked off their 2012 tournament run with a sloppy 78-59 victory over the Loyola (MD) Greyhounds in Pittsburgh yesterday. Deshaun Thomas shined, scoring a career-high 31 points to go along with a game-high 12 rebounds, but the team committed 18 turnovers and went through long stretches of inefficiency on offense.

Ohio State coach Thad Matta was just happy to win, "Obviously this tournament is about advancing, and that's what we did tonight," Matta said. "I don't think we played at the level we need to. Our guys know that. Give Loyola a ton of credit for that. They came at us."

Still, the Greyhounds were severely undersized and had little chance of an upset with Jared Sullinger (12 points, 11 rebounds) and Thomas dominating the glass. The Buckeyes outrebounded Loyola 49-24 and collected 16 of those from the offensive glass -- which turned into 15 second chance points for Ohio State. The Buckeyes were also able to get to the line early and often, which helped overcome some early shooting struggles. But the star of the game was Thomas, who hit 13 of his 22 shots from a wide variety of ranges.

"Deshaun was excellent on the boards and also scoring the basketball. He pretty much carried this team,”  Sullinger said. “I don't think we would have won it without him."

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As the Susan Lucci of filling out NCAA tournament brackets, I decided that this year I’d take a different approach to my March Madness selections.

For the first time ever, I went to an expert for guidance. Not a college hoops beat writer or blogger or any of the unctuous talking heads from CBS or ESPN who have been proven wrong time and again, but a more approachable, less likely sage.

The frumpy receptionist who doesn’t know Mike Krzyzewski from Vladimir Putin but has somehow won your office pool three years running? Even better: my eight-year-old son, who has never watched a basketball game in his life.

If there’s one thing we’ve all learned over the years, it’s that the less you know about college basketball going into the tournament, the better off you’ll be in making your picks. And since this kid equates watching any kind of organized sport with having his toenails clipped, I figured he’s the equivalent of a tournament-bracket oracle.

I’ll warn you, some of his selections will be startling to anybody who’s ever heard of Dick Vitale. But since it’s been roughly 20 years since I was even in contention in a pool after the second round, who am I to question his logic?

We start with the play-in games. He picks Western Kentucky to beat Mississippi Valley State because Kentucky is warmer (than Ohio, presumably, not Mississippi). He goes with BYU because he likes the schools that just have letters as their name. And he favors South Florida over California “because it’s a really nice, warm place.”

And we’re off to the races.

In the first round alone, some would question his wisdom. His prediction of three No. 16 seeds winning, for example, is controversial, to be sure, but not that much sketchier than anything that’s ever left Seth Davis’ mouth.

In the South region, he picks Indiana to run the table and reach the Final Four because of the natural correlation between Tom Crean’s Hoosiers and adventuring archeologist Indiana Jones. Similarly, he gives UNLV a first-round nod after learning that they’re from Las Vegas, which is featured prominently in the movie Percy Jackson and the Olympians “and looks awesome.”

And unlike the rest of us, who make and re-make our picks and second-guess ourselves into oblivion, he sticks with his guns and never looks back. He selects Xavier over Notre Dame because of the “z” sound and the inherent coolness of the letter x. He’s confident Duke will hold off Lehigh because “a duke is someone you’d find in a castle.”

Take that, Clark Kellogg.

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Jared Sullinger dominated for the second consecutive day, this time scoring 22 points and six rebounds in a 77-55 rout of the No. 10 Michigan Wolverines. The victory gives Ohio State a chance to win its third consecutive Big Ten tournament title, but the Buckeyes will have to earn it against No. 8 Michigan State in the championship game Sunday afternoon.

Ohio State’s semifinals matchup hardly looked like a clash between two teams that shared the conference title. The Buckeyes dominated every step of the way -- building a 10 point lead in the first half that it never lost in the second. The Buckeyes shot 52% from the field and held Michigan to just 28% with 18 turnovers.

Michigan coach John Beilein had no choice but to give Ohio State credit, "I've seen some really good teams that have played some really good games," Beilein said. "That's as good of a game as I've ever seen a college team play."

Sullinger and Deshaun Thomas continued to do the most damage, combining to score 46 of Ohio State’s 77 points. They were a collective 19-29 from the field -- and with that kind of efficiency from the frontcourt -- it’s hard for shooting teams like Michigan to keep pace.

The Buckeyes’ were also flawless in the defense of standout point guard Tre Burke. Burke, who earned Freshman Player of the Year honors last week, was stifled by Craft all game. Burke scored just five points (10 under his season average) and didn’t hit his first shot from the field until the seven minute mark in the second half. That was a wild departure from the 30 points he scored in an overtime victory over Minnesota in the quarterfinals. Burke also had a career-high eight turnovers against just four assists.

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