The first Saturday in December is obviously known to college sports fans as conference championship day. Football takes center stage today, but there was a great college basketball slate on tap today as well. The 2025-26 Northwestern basketball team lost to the Ohio State Buckeyes 86-82 today, in what is the same matchup as the 2018 and 2020 Big Ten football title game, both which were also won by Ohio St.
The win improved the Buckeyes to 7-1, and 1-0 in the Big Ten. NU fell to 5-4, 0-2 in the league.
The result ended a three game win streak in the series for Northwestern. The last time these two teams faced off, it marked a Northwestern basketball program milestone- their largest margin of victory in Columbus ever, 70-49.
Today’s result was the polar opposite, however.
This line, from a Talk Basket article covering Scoop B Radio, perfectly encapsulates the current feeling surrounding this Northwestern basketball team: “The content itself is the currency.” Or “the results speak for themselves,” “numbers don’t lie,” or as the legendary Bill Parcells famously said: “you are your record.”
Northwestern basketball has given up 77+ points in their past six games. They’ve yielded 85+ in the past three, and 80+ in four of the last five.
Northwestern basketball coach Chris Collins was blunt about it, in the postgame press conference
“Anyone who is watching knows what we have to do,” Collins said “We gave up 62 points in the paint, which makes it very difficult to win.
“You can complain about scheme, but we’re scoring over 80 points. It’s not offense. We have to stop people, we have to be more disciplined on that end.
“We need to keep people out of the paint and we’re not doing that.”
Collins later made remarks that perfectly preview the article you’re reading right now:
“I know you guys have to do a doomsday,” he said. “It’s a doomsday world…we’ve got to stay in the boat and rally around each other.”
He’s right! And you can thank the billionaire tech broligarchy, and the algoritms their companies created and subjugate us with for that doomsday world. So let’s doomsday now!
Northwestern Basketball Points Surrendered
-85 at Wisconsin, in a Big Ten opener where the final score line was not at all indicative of how much the Badgers dominated
-86 to Oklahoma State, on Thankgiving night, in a game that will be remembered more for its excruciatingly poor tip-off time decision than anything else. It is worth noting that Ok. St. is undefeated, as Collins pointed out during the presser.
-79 to DePaul, in a win so credit NU on that. However, DePaul is every bit as much DePaul this season, as they have been DePaul for the past 20 years or so. The Blue Demons lost their only other game against a power conference team, 96-63, to LSU.
Ohio State head coach Jake Diebler was asked about the Northwestern basketball defensive woes, and he gave a very long response that didn’t answer the question at all.
The closest he came to actually addressing the topic put to him was this: “it’s early for all of us and i think we’re all trying to settle in to who we are, and what works.”
It is not all doom and gloom though for Collins and his Northwestern basketball program though. He also provided an uplifting message of hope in his postgame press conference.
“We’re not going to splinter, we’re not going to fragment,” Collins said. “I’m not going to let that happen now. Whether we become a great team, I understand what we have to do. “We have to reset this thing on the defensive end of the floor and figure things out, have a really week of practice.”
“The only thing we can control is getting ourselves in a position to come back next weekend, play really well and get some momentum in a positive direction.”
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, RG.org and Ratings.org. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Washington Post.