It's easy to forget that Eleven Warriors is an Ohio State sports website, plural, rather than an Ohio State football website for part of the year and an Ohio State basketball website for another part of the year, and an island of misfit takes for the rest of the time. Days like today help us remember, because both the men's basketball team and the football team are suited up and ready for action due to a somewhat unusual scheduling quirk, and we'll be here all day to bring you coverage of both games.
In fact, it's possible that this is the first time ever that both teams have played the same opponent on the same day, but even if my on-the-fly research is somehow off a tad, today marks just one of a handful of times in the last decade in which both teams have graced our televisions on the same day.
And, as we're about to see, if you're the superstitious sort they should definitely do this more often.
NOVEMBER 20th, 2010
North Carolina-Wilmington rolled into Columbus for an early season matchup and got completely blown out. You probably didn't watch it, but it was one of those games where a team is down by 30 at halftime and you think "Oh, maybe it'll get a little closer in the second half," and then they lose by 40. Deshaun Thomas took 13 shots, and no one else took more than 8, which is very funny to me.
That same day, the football team was in Iowa City, beating the Hawkeyes 20-17. Terrelle Pryor was 18-33 passing for 195 yards, and 102 of those yards went to Dane Sanzenbacher, in case you forgot that this was a Jim Tressel-coached team.
JANUARY 4th, 2011
Later that season, it flipped! Kind of! This time, the men's basketball team took their turn beating the Hawkeyes (in Iowa City, naturally), 73-68. That win got the Buckeyes to 15-0 on the season. Really.
But you probably remember that date as the time that a 31-26 Sugar Bowl victory over the Arkansas Razorbacks definitely did happen no matter what anyone says or will ever say, especially because Jim Tressel said this at halftime, which is pure and good and God help you if you try and take this away from me:
NOVEMBER 16th, 2013
Ohio State won both of these games by scores of 52-35 and 60-35. I'm not going to tell you which was the football team playing Illinois and which was men's basketball playing Marquette. You'll have to click the links.
DECEMBER 7th, 2013
Less than a month later, both teams played on the same day again. The football Bucks unfortunately had their "GIVE IT TO HYDE" game against Michigan State in the Big Ten Championship game, losing 34-24, but the silver lining here was a 74-56 victory over Central Connecticut that I'm sure helped with the sting of missing out on a possible national championship game. Also, Amir Williams played pretty well, so that's nice.
DECEMBER 6th, 2014
You would probably never in a million years be able to guess who the Ohio State men's basketball team played on the same day that the football team beat Wisconsin 59-0 in the largest margin of victory by an underdog in college football history, but it was Colgate, and the Raiders didn't manage even as many points as the football team in a 70-50 loss against the basketball Bucks.
Fun fact, three Colgate players recorded a Trillion in this game, which is really fantastic.
So what have we learned? Well, in general, it's usually a good sign when both of the money teams in Ohio State sports are playing on the same day. And it's a really good sign when Ohio State football happens to be playing the Wisconsin Badgers in a Big Ten Championship Game. Hopefully fate holds true tonight.
