CHICAGO — Ohio State hasn’t had a start like this in half a decade. With an 80-66 win over UCLA in the CBS Sports Classic on Saturday, the 15th-ranked Buckeyes are now 11-1, including a 2-0 start in Big Ten play after beating Minnesota and Illinois earlier in December.

They’ve won three of their four marquee non-conference games, each of the wins coming away from home, as a 72-62 loss to Syracuse in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge remains the only blemish on Ohio State’s resume.

The Buckeyes started 15-0 in the 2013-14 season before going 8-8 in their final 16 regular season games and losing to Dayton in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

But you could argue this year’s group of Buckeyes, despite having seven freshmen or sophomores plus a graduate transfer among the team’s top 10 players, has a more impressive collection of wins at this point in the season.

Ohio State won at Cincinnati and at Creighton in the first two weeks of the season and it bookended its non-conference resume with its victory over UCLA.

After a woeful shooting night against Syracuse’s 2-3 zone that saw the Buckeyes shoot 37 percent inside the arc and 27 percent behind it, they were able to slice up UCLA’s zone defense in Chicago to the tune of 26 assists on 28 made field goals.

Ohio State Coach Chris Holtmann expected the Bruins to show some zone looks but not the nearly 40 minutes his team faced on Saturday.

“We thought that we would see zone,” he said after the game, “but I’m not sure that we thought that we would see that much.”

Sophomore forward Kaleb Wesson, Ohio State’s leading scorer at 16.5 points per game, was tasked with combatting the length of UCLA inside. The Bruins have the second-tallest average height in the country at 6-7 and they usually have three players on the floor who are 6-8 or taller – some combination of 6-8 Kris Wilkes, 6-9 Cody Riley, 6-9 Chris Smith, 6-10 Jalen Hill and 7-1 Moses Brown.

“We felt like [Wesson] could take advantage of his size,” Holtmann said. “He’s really good at sealing, he’s really good at catching and when you’re evaluating big kids, those are two things that are really important. We felt like he could get deep seal touches, deep post touches against them.”

The 6-9 forward used his 270-pound frame to create space on the low block for post touches for himself and driving lanes for teammates. He posted his second double-double of the season with 15 points and 12 rebounds, leading all players with a plus-15 plus/minus.

“That’s what we try to do for 40 minutes, make it a tough, grind it out, physical game,” Wesson said. “I feel like just occupying them, getting in their legs, trying to wear them down was a big key.”

Wesson drew a game-high seven fouls as UCLA’s defenders struggled to contain him once he caught the ball inside of their 2-3 zone. He often occupied the high post, smack dab in the middle of UCLA’s 2-3 zone, with a teammate – often his brother Andre Wesson, sophomore Kyle Young or Wake Forest grad transfer Keyshawn Woods – running the baseline.

It was Wesson who paced Ohio State in the first half with 10 points and six rebounds as the Buckeyes couldn’t find their rhythm from deep (3-of-10) and UCLA made 14 of its 29 field goal attempts in the first half.

“I couldn’t stand our defense in the first 10 minutes,” Holtmann said.

After Ohio State took a 33-30 lead into halftime, senior point guard C.J. Jackson took over. He scored 20 of his game-high 22 points in the second half in just the fourth 20-point game of his career.

“I thought he had a stretch there that kind of broke the game open in the second half where we moved him off the ball,” Holtmann said.

Jackson made three of his five three-point attempts in the half – extending Ohio State’s lead to seven, 13 and 16 points, respectively – as he repeatedly hurt UCLA from the right corner.

Despite struggling early against the length at the top of the Bruins’ zone, when he committed back-to-back turnovers in the opening four minutes, Jackson sniffed a triple-double with 22 points, seven rebounds and six assists.

Woods, a fellow senior, was an even bigger creator offensively as he dished out 10 assists with zero turnovers, making him responsible for the assist on 35 percent of Ohio State’s made field goals. He brought the Ohio State fans in attendance to their feet when he launched an alley-oop to Young in transition from halfcourt.

“I thought Keyshawn,” Holtmann said,” might have been as instrumental as anything.”

Ohio State will head home to Columbus, where it wraps up the calendar year with its final non-conference game against High Point on December 29, with five wins that will fall in Quadrant 1 or Quadrant 2 in March. At this time last season, Ohio State had lost to four of the five best teams it had played, leaving the Buckeyes with a lackluster non-conference resume.

“Last year we did not do a great job in non-conference games that are going to be evaluated at the end of the year by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee,” Holtmann said. “That was something we were trying to be a little more aware of … to have a non-conference that we could pick up some wins that are important was good but more than anything, we just have to keep growing and getting better.”

Michigan’s undefeated record, which includes lopsided wins against Villanova, Providence, North Carolina and Purdue, makes the Wolverines the team to beat in the Big Ten. But Ohio State has earned its place among the conference’s deep, next tier, along with Michigan State, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska and Maryland.

Despite losing three of its top five scorers from last season, including Big Ten Player of the Year Keita Bates-Diop, Ohio State is exceeding expectations for the second year in a row as it’s once again in contention for a top-four finish in the Big Ten.

The Buckeyes were picked to finish eighth in the Big Ten in an unofficial preseason media poll in the fall. Now they’re ranked as the fourth-best team in the conference, according to kenpom.com, which projects them to go 12-6 in conference play.

Last year, they were picked 11th in the same poll (and only one vote ahead of 12th) but they earned the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament after tying with Purdue with a 15-3 conference record.

Ohio State has had a productive two months to open the season but the Buckeyes’ work is far from over as they prepare to resume conference play in the Big Ten, which is arguably the country’s deepest conference.

“(We’re) happy but not satisfied,” Wesson said. “We still have a lot of work to do.”