(U-WIRE) COLUMBUS, Ohio – Coming off of the type of win that would make any team’s season, the Ohio State men’s basketball team has to keep their heads in the game for one final weekend.

Four days after handing No. 1 Illinois their first loss of the season, the Buckeyes (19-11, 8-8 Big Ten) travel to the Big Ten tournament as the sixth seed, starting with a game against 11th-seeded Penn State (7-22, 1-15 Big Ten) Thursday at the United Center in Chicago.

Normally, a team playing in their conference tournament would be motivated by the chance to make the NCAA Tournament with a good showing. Not so for OSU, as the Buckeyes know their season will end this weekend, win or lose, thanks to the school’s self-imposed postseason ban.

“It is kind of bittersweet,” junior forward Matt Sylvester said. “I don’t think we’re a bubble team anymore. We probably would be in the [NCAA] Tournament.”

The Buckeyes will never find out, though. All they can do is try to find a positive result in Chicago, and it starts with Penn State, a team that OSU has beaten twice this year.

On Jan. 16, OSU snapped a four-game losing streak by beating the Nittany Lions 68-62 at the Schottenstein Center. The Buckeyes completed the sweep Feb. 12 in State College, Pa., with a 66-56 win.

In the two games, OSU junior guard Je’Kel Foster averaged 13.5 points and 6.5 rebounds, while senior guard Tony Stockman scored 17 in the January tilt. For Penn State, freshman guard/forward Geary Claxton averaged 16 points and 11.5 rebounds, while junior forward Aaron Johnson averaged 11 rebounds.

On the season, Johnson leads the Big Ten in rebounds per game with 9.9, while Claxton leads the team in points with 12.4 per game and was named to the All-Big Ten freshman team on Tuesday.

OSU coach Thad Matta set aside any thoughts that it would be tough to defeat Penn State for a third time this season.

“I think I’m different in that regard,” he said. “We take it one game at a time. You look at the two game tapes that you’ve played them and try to figure out what they’re going to do and what we need to do.”

The Buckeyes started preparing for Penn State on Monday, the day after the Illinois win. Sylvester, the hero against the Fighting Illini with a career-high 25 points and the game-winning 3-pointer, said the Buckeyes could go either way after coming down from the high of the win.

“That’s the scary thing about getting to the pinnacle like that – you can get either really complacent and happy with yourself and your game can kind of go south, or you can use the energy and the confidence to just keep rolling,” Sylvester said. “I think we’re going to take this momentum we have right now and bring it into the Big Ten tournament.”

In his career, Matta has won three of the four conference tournaments he’s coached in. He led Butler to the 2001 Midwestern Collegiate Conference title, then won Atlantic-10 tournament titles with Xavier in 2002 and 2004, beating undefeated No. 1 St. Joseph’s along the way last year.

He said he doesn’t expect to go to his bench more or change his coaching philosophy despite the fact that OSU could play up to four games in as many days if they keep winning.

“We have to go play 160 minutes of basketball, but it’s one minute at a time and if you don’t play particularly well for the first 40, you won’t be playing the other 120,” he said.

The Buckeyes earned one individual honor yesterday when junior center Terence Dials was named second team All-Big Ten by both the coaches and the media, his first such honor.

“I think it’s an accomplishment,” he said. “It’s just a tribute to the coaches and to my teammates.”

The center from Youngstown led OSU with 16.4 points per game and 7.9 rebounds per game. The marks were fifth and third in the conference, respectively.

As the Buckeyes prepare for the tournament, senior guard Brandon Fuss-Cheatham said that it was tough to think that his basketball career is nearly over.

“That’s the realness of it,” he said. “I know for me, when it’s all over, it’s going to be tough to swallow.”

He talked about how the team has fought through the adversity of the postseason ban and numerous tough losses.

“We’ve just grown so much as a team, especially this year with a lot of things that have happened to us,” Fuss-Cheatham said. “There’s so much that we’ve been through that to be honest, we feel like we are family.”

That family hopes they have four more games this season.

“I don’t think anyone is ready to go home right now, so we’re going to be playing hard,” Dials said. “Penn State doesn’t want to go home. It’s going to be challenge for us.”

If the Buckeyes win, they’ll face Wisconsin (20-7, 11-5 Big Ten), a team they’ve lost to twice this season, in the second round Friday.

– Jeff Svoboda