{"id":22442,"date":"2012-03-21T22:41:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T03:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=22442"},"modified":"2012-03-21T22:41:57","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T03:41:57","slug":"east-region-sweet-16-picks-2-ohio-state-vs-6-cincinnati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/east-region-sweet-16-picks-2-ohio-state-vs-6-cincinnati-22442\/","title":{"rendered":"East Region Sweet 16 Picks: #2 Ohio State vs. #6 Cincinnati"},"content":{"rendered":"

2012 NCAA Tournament<\/strong>
\nSweet 16\u2013 East Region<\/strong>
\nThursday, 3\/22\/12, 9:45 p.m. Eastern, TV: CBS<\/strong>
\n#2 Ohio State Buckeyes (29-7) vs. #6 Cincinnati Bearcats (26-10)<\/strong>
\nTD Garden \u2013 Boston, MA<\/strong>
\nOpening Line: Ohio State -7.5<\/strong>
\nCurrent Line: Ohio State -7.5<\/strong>
\nOpening Total: 131<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total: 129
\nOdds Courtesy of Bookmaker<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Cincinnati
Cincy's Yancy Gates hopes to help the Bearcats win the battle of the boards and beat Ohio State on Thursday.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second-seeded Ohio State Buckeyes and sixth-seeded Cincinnati Bearcats lead a record four schools from the same state in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.\u00a0 The Buckeyes (29-7) and Bearcats (26-10) will also have conference bragging rights on the line when they meet on Thursday for a spot in Saturday\u2019s East Regional Final against the Syracuse-Wisconsin winner at Boston\u2019s TD Garden.<\/p>\n

Both Ohio State (-7.5, O\/U 129) and Cincinnati lost in the title game of their conference tournaments but have rebounded to become two of the most impressive teams in the Big Dance so far.\u00a0 The Buckeyes have won five of six, with their lone loss during that stretch coming against Michigan State 68-64 in the Big Ten tournament championship game on March 11.\u00a0 The Bearcats have been even better lately, winning six of seven straight-up and eight of nine against the spread.\u00a0 They fell to Louisville 50-44 on March 10 in the Big East tournament championship.<\/p>\n

Cincy has played a couple close games in the team\u2019s first two rounds, finding different ways to win each time.\u00a0 The Bearcats built a huge early lead against No. 11 Texas before holding on for a 65-59 victory last Friday and then came from behind to beat No. 3 Florida State 62-56 on Sunday.\u00a0 Sophomore guard Sean Kilpatrick led them against the Seminoles with 18 points on 5 of 9 shooting, including 4 of 6 from 3-point range.\u00a0 Kilpatrick had scored just 13 points combined in the previous two games after scoring 18 in a 71-68 upset of Syracuse in the Big East tourney semifinals.<\/p>\n

Ohio State is coming off a gritty 73-66 victory against No. 7 Gonzaga last Saturday after crushing No. 15 Loyola (Maryland) 78-59 in the second round.\u00a0 The Buckeyes got an outstanding performance from sophomore point guard Aaron Craft against the Bulldogs, as he totaled 17 points and 10 assists in 40 minutes while holding Gonzaga counterpart Kevin Pangos to 10 points on 3 of 13 shooting.\u00a0 Pangos, a freshman, was the team\u2019s leading scorer with 13.6 points per game.<\/p>\n

The key individual matchup in this game pits Ohio State\u2019s Jared Sullinger against Cincinnati\u2019s Yancy Gates inside.\u00a0 Sullinger had 18 points and four rebounds against the Bulldogs in his last game and will need to control the middle against Gates, who was limited to 10 points and five rebounds in 31 minutes against Florida State due to foul trouble.\u00a0 Gates had 15 points and 10 rebounds against the Longhorns in his previous game, and his ability to battle on the boards could limit offensive opportunities for Buckeye sharpshooters Deshaun Thomas and William Buford.\u00a0 Thomas is averaging nearly 21 points in Ohio State\u2019s last five games.<\/p>\n

The OVER is 8-1 in the past nine games for the Buckeyes while the UNDER has cashed in three straight and seven of 10 for the Bearcats.\u00a0 The UNDER is also 13-3 in Ohio State\u2019s last 16 games against Big East opponents.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on winning NCAA tournament picks<\/a> and let the college basketball handicappers<\/a> at Maddux Sports line your pockets with cash.\u00a0 March Madness picks<\/a> packages are available now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2012 NCAA Tournament Sweet 16\u2013 East Region Thursday, 3\/22\/12, 9:45 p.m. Eastern, TV: CBS #2 Ohio State Buckeyes (29-7) vs. #6 Cincinnati Bearcats (26-10) TD Garden \u2013 Boston, MA Opening Line: Ohio State -7.5 Current Line: Ohio State -7.5 Opening Total: 131 Current Total: 129 Odds Courtesy of Bookmaker The second-seeded Ohio State Buckeyes and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":9753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[6568,5702,1152,1379,9,4661,4660,3,4662,6571,6570,4659,412,463,4743],"class_list":["post-22442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-big-dance","tag-cincinnati","tag-cincinnati-bearcats","tag-east-region","tag-march-madness","tag-march-madness-betting","tag-march-madness-picks","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-ncaa-tournament-betting","tag-ncaa-tournament-lines","tag-ncaa-tournament-odds","tag-ncaa-tournament-picks","tag-ohio-state","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-sweet-16"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22442"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22444,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22442\/revisions\/22444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}