The only point I'd make about OSU and Purdue is that we can't use "they were in OT" and calling them bad bounces... Neither team should have been in OT against undermatched seed lines, if the seeding was anywhere near accurate. And if the seeding was accurate, Illinois was terrible.
MSU was a play-in game, so I'll give that one the bad bounce treatment. That could easily have gone the other way. Rutgers overperformed to be within 3 of Houston, so that's a positive. Wisconsin blew the doors off UNC, so that's also overperforming.
OSU and Purdue escaping round one wouldn't flip the script, unless you look at it PURELY from a W/L perspective. And I know you're more astute than that. When you're a 2 or 4 seed, you're simply supposed to win, and win handily. A close win isn't a good look at all. Sure beats a close loss though, for the fan!
I do get that. Obviously, Ohio State winning in OT as a #2 wouldn't be a great look, but I didn't credit/debit the conference for Illinois winning big (29 points) in their first round game either.
I'm only looking at W's and L's because I want to be objective. What if Illinois had pulled their starters sooner against Drexel and "only" won by 14? So what?
I don't think we care because the format suggests that we shouldn't. Look, if Purdue won six NCAA Tournament games each by one point in double OT they'd be the National Champions and nobody would say "yeah but they only beat the #16 seed by a point".
Another example is Thad Matta's first great Ohio State team (Oden, Connelly). They BARELY survived a #8 in the second round then won three more games before losing in the NC. I don't think anybody thinks less of that team because they almost lost in the second round.
The nature of the format is that close doesn't count for anything either way.
More specifically to this year, suppose tOSU and Purdue had pulled their openers out in OT then beaten Florida/Villanova in the second round. We wouldn't be talking about the too-close wins over Oral Roberts and North Texas, we'd be talking about the wins over Florida/Villanova, being in the S16, and upcoming games against Arkansas/Baylor. Nobody would care that our teams "almost" lost their openers.