Ohio State blows past Villanova in Columbus

Joe Maiorana-USA TODAY SportsWhen you think about this, we should have seen this coming.

The Ohio State Buckeyes hosted the Villanova Wildcats Wednesday night in the Gavitt Games, and the Buckeyes came away with a dominant 76-51 wire-to-wire victory.

Why should we have all expected it? Two reasons!

In the years where Villanova actually loses nonconference games, they make the loss count. Syracuse in 2013-14, Oklahoma and Virginia in 2015-16, Michigan and Kansas last year (and Furman and Penn, but those are outliers), the Wildcats get challenged early in the season and Jay Wright’s system isn’t fully in place yet. You can generally make it work if you have a point guard like Jalen Brunson…