Ohio State Basketball to Open Season with Illinois State

Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann says the Buckeyes will open the season on Nov. 25 with the Redbirds.

Ohio State men's basketball head coach Chris Holtmann announced last week that the Buckeyes wouldn't be playing in a season-opening tournament at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, SD with some of the best teams in the country. But at the time, he wasn't able to share what his team's plans would be moving forward, including when the season would start and who the first game would be against.

On Monday morning, Holtmann delivered some good news to Buckeye Nation during a local radio interview on 97.1 The Fan.

.@ChrisHoltmann on @MorningJuice971 #Buckeyes will open up the season next week on 11/25 against Illinois State.

— Brandon Beam (@BrandonBeam971) November 16, 2020

The Buckeyes will open the 2020-21 campaign on November 25 against the Illinois State Redbirds out of the Missouri Valley Conference. The Redbirds finished last year 10-21, including a 5-13 record in conference play. They seemed to play some extremely competitive games outside of the conference, including a 1-point loss to Cincinnati and a 2-point loss to UCF. But the Redbirds return only one of their top four scorers from last year and they were picked to finish ninth in their league in the preseason poll.

Holtmann didn't go into great detail, other than to say the Scarlet and Gray will play in a multi-team event and they'll open with Illinois State. Holtmann told reporters last week that he intends on having a full 27-game schedule, but he's not counting on playing all 27 games this year. Considering the Buckeyes have Morehead State, Alabama A&M, Notre Dame and North Carolina all on the schedule already, and the Big Ten is playing a 20-game regular season schedule, that means Ohio State could have two more non-league games after Illinois State in the multi-team event to open the season.

The Buckeyes were originally supposed to play in the Bahamas to open the season, but the pandemic forced that tournament to be relocated to South Dakota. With spiking CoVID rates in South Dakota and with the quarantine rules in effect for Ohioans returning from the Mount Rushmore state, Ohio State decided to pull out of that tournament.

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