The No. 8 seed Ohio State basketball's NCAA Tournament campaign has come to an end on Thursday, as they suffered a 66-64 loss at the hands of No. 9 seed TCU Horned Frogs at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, South Carolina.
It was not just the Ohio State's March Madness trip that ended with that defeat. It also bitterly punctuated senior Bruce Thornton's Buckeyes story.
Following the game, Ohio State basketball head coach Jake Diebler fought tears while talking about Thornton, who was already at Ohio State before Diebler started his coaching stint with the program.
“That I love him,” an emotional Diebler said when asked what he would tell Thornton after the loss to TCU, via Adam King of 10TV Sports. “That he'll always be a part of our family. And I think it's not just him, it's all those guys. Like those guys bought into what we wanted to do and we took an important step for our program. And he was a huge, huge reason for that.”
Thornton took the last shot of the TCU game, a half-court heave that hit all backboard. In what turned out to be his final game in Buckeyes threads, he scored 10 points on 3-for-9 shooting with four rebounds, four assists. He did not take a breather, playing all 40 minutes.
Thornton started playing for the Buckeyes in the 2022-23 college basketball season, but it was only this year that he was able to partake in an NCAA Tournament game, with Ohio State missing the Big Fance in the previous four seasons.
