With Keith Appling draped all over him, William Buford hit an absolute dagger of a shot to help Ohio State down Michigan State and ensure a three-way tie atop the Big Ten conference for the season. While that makes banner manufacturers very happy, it was not the result the Spartans were expecting after they found themselves up by 9 after the first half. Ohio State won this game by keeping MSU off the glass, getting to the free throw line, and by the excellent work by whoever had the job of talking Buford into coming back to school every May. With Jared Sullinger largely ineffective, Buford put the Buckeyes on his back, carrying them with 25 points on 14 shots.

The Big Ten men’s basketball coaches held their weekly Big Ten teleconference Monday with reporters from around the league, and we’ve posted the audio from each phone interview in the post below. All of our audio can be found in our BTN.com audio archive.

In my first daily batch of links for this week, Matt Charboneau of the Detroit News tells us that Delvon Roe feels Branden Dawson’s pain. No doubt, and Dawson’s loss for the rest of the season to a knee injury suffered in the loss to Ohio State will have a big impact on Michigan State in the postseason. This is a slumping Spartan squad that enters the Big Ten tourney as the No. 1 seed but riding consecutive losses at Indiana and at home yesterday to the Buckeyes on Senior Day. Now, this: News that the freshman sensation is done.

The Big Ten Conference released its Men’s Basketball Players of the Week for the final week of the regular season on Monday. See who took home the honors and see what they did to earn the distinctions in this post.

The bracket for the 15th Big Ten tourney is set, with games beginning on Thursday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Michigan State, Michigan, Ohio State and Wisconsin are the top four seeds, respectively, with each receiving a bye in the first round. But the other eight schools will be in action on the first day of a tourney that has been dominated by Ohio State in recent years.