Ohio State's Bruce Thornton, left, looks for an open pass against Illinois' Kylan Boswell during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)

MORGANTOWN — The challenge, at least on paper, would appear to be clear. Yet that’s generally not the reality when it comes to college basketball.

West Virginia (8-3) will walk into Rocket Arena — the home of the Cleveland Cavaliers — at 8 p.m. today armed with the third-best scoring defense in the country.

On the other sideline will be Ohio State (7-2), which sits in the top 50 of scoring offenses in the country and has the Big Ten’s second-leading scorer in senior guard Bruce Thornton, who averages 21.7 points per game and is coming off a 34-point performance against No. 13 Illinois.

“They’re really good offensively,” WVU head coach Ross Hodge said. “They lead the country in two-point (shooting) percentage. They’ve got one of the best players in the Big Ten in Bruce Thornton. They can challenge you in a lot of different ways and we’ll have to be razor sharp.”

It would be easy to say to take Ohio State’s offense and pit it against West Virginia’s defense and let’s have some fun.

Yet little has been fun, to this point, for WVU when it comes to its marquee matchups in nonconference play. The Mountaineers’ defensive numbers have, to a large degree, been built up against smaller mid-major competition.

When it came to the likes of a Clemson, the Tigers scored at will in the paint. Against Xavier, the Musketeers bombed away with 16 3-pointers. A week ago against Wake Forest, it was nearly a one-man show with Demon Deacons guard Juke Harris hitting seven 3-pointers and scoring 28 points.

Thornton may wind up being every bit the challenge to defend that Harris was, except the Buckeyes will also throw the trio of seven-footer Christoph Tilly, John Mobley Jr. and Devin Royal into the equation. They all average more than 13 points a game and the Buckeyes have averaged 87.4 points as a team.

“When you’re playing really good offensive teams, there’s a couple of things you can’t do,” Hodge said. “You can’t give them freebies, because you turned it over and just say, ‘Here’s another 10 points.’ You also have to be really sound in your game plan execution. The last thing you want is you can’t give them easy ones. They’re going to make hard ones, because they’re talented and they’re going to put you in difficult positions. So, you better be doing everything in your power to make it hard on them.”

Ohio State, too, is not without its concerns. The Buckeyes lost to Pitt, 67-66, the one Power Conference team the Mountaineers have handled this season. They struggled to make shots in a one-point win against Notre Dame and this matchup with WVU comes sandwiched between the loss against Illinois and next week’s featured game against No. 14 North Carolina.

The bigger issue just may be West Virginia’s psyche, in that the Mountaineers have yet to take advantage and win any of its marquee nonconference games. WVU did take care of Pitt by 22 points a month ago, but the Panthers are now just a 5-5 team with home losses against Quinnipiac and Hofstra and are ranked No. 163 in the NCAA’s NET rankings.

Ohio State, ranked No. 49 in the NET, will likely prove to be much more of a challenge, and sooner or later, the Mountaineers are going to have to step up and prove they can beat an upper-level team.

“Whether it’s Wheeling or Duke, I want to win every game,” Hodge said. “I know what you’re saying, psychologically, I think more than anything we’ve put ourselves into position (to win). We just haven’t finished it. You want to win, because it’s another opportunity in the non-league. It’s our last opportunity (in the nonconference schedule). We’re not going to shy away from it. We talk about it.

“Truth is, if you win, it’s not like you’re a lock for the NCAA tournament. If you lose, it’s not like you’re an anti-lock.”