A friend told me every person they've ever met from Eaton, Ohio, is insane. Like, even more insane than me. I investigated these reports and can confirm Preble County to be the (flatter) West Virginia of southwest Ohio.
Some things I enjoyed on the excursion:
- Old Schoolhouse Winery. An 1890s schoolhouse converted into a winery. Talk about an upgrade!
- Buckeye Jake's in West Alexandria. Order the "crazy fries." They're dusted with Henny Penny Flour, and worth the iron tax deep-fried food puts on the ol' intestinal tract.
- Black Panther. Most super hero movies are predictably boring. Not this one. Worth every cent of the Early Bird special.
ICYMI:
- Seniors contributed 64 points in a 73-60 women's basketball Senior Day shellacking of Purdue.
- Wrestlebucks beat North Carolina State, 29-6.
- Kendall Sheffield excels for the track team while preparing for second Buckeye football season.
- Redshirt freshmen OL Wyatt Davis and Josh Myers could earn their way into the rotation this year.
- Malik Harrison and Rashod Berry tabbed as the football team's dunk kings.
- Reserve your (or your business’) spot next to the life-size statue of Woody Hayes coming to Newcomerstown!
Word of the Day: Peculation.
HELLO, DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND. Losing to Michigan in big games almost never happens anymore.
Yesterday, after flipping through my cable catalogue for 20 minutes trying to find CBS Sports Network, I thought I had a stroke. Ohio State... trailing... against the big rival? Surely this miscarriage of justice would soon be righted.
It did not.
From Young Adam Schefter, Dan Hope of Eleven Warriors:
The Buckeyes (22-7, 13-3) suffered their second consecutive loss on Sunday, marking the first time since November that Ohio State has lost back-to-back games, as Michigan scored a 74-62 win over its rivals on the Wolverines' Senior Day at the Crisler Center.
Ohio State's Jae'Sean Tate had his best game of the season on Sunday, scoring 20 points and grabbing 15 rebounds, but it wasn't enough for the Buckeyes as Muhammad-Ali Abdul-Rakhman (17), Jordan Poole (15), Zavier Simpson (13) and Moritz Wagner (12) each scored in double figures to lead the Wolverines to victory.
Sunday's game was a back-and-forth affair for most of the first half, with the lead changing hands eight times and neither team leading by more than four in the game's first 13 minutes and 55 seconds, but Ohio State never regained the lead after the Wolverines went on a 9-0 run to take a 26-18 lead with just over five minutes to play in the first half.
Credit to Penn State and Michigan fans: They brought the ruckus on both occasions.
For Ohio State, it's starting to realize life at the top of the Big Ten pile ain't all it's cracked up to be in mid-February.
The only thing that would soil this season is Ohio State losing to Rutgers and Indiana and then getting bounced in the first round of the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments. I don't think a six-game skid to end the season will happen under the watch of Chris Holtmann.
THE BURT GOES ON. When Joseph Thomas Barrett IV arrived in Columbus as a four-star freshman in 1967 and cobbled together a 51-season career that culminated with enough clout to rename lesser humans.
Such became the fate of Joe Burrow, a 2015 four-star signee from Athens. That meant somebody's Joe had to go.
Burrow goes by John in team meetings now. And despite Barrett leaving, the tradition continues.
From 247sports.com:
This continued through the remaining two years of Barrett's career and carried on with the other quarterbacks. When Dwayne Haskins arrived in Columbus, Burrow decided he would be called "Ross." Tate Martell was given the nickname "Chuck" by strength and conditioning coach Mick Marotti.
Barrett's Ohio State career is now over, so does the nickname tradition live on?
Evidently it does.
[...]
"My nickname is Burt," Matthew Baldwin said. "I didn’t get it either. I can’t wait until I’m the old guy giving the young guys names. But I can’t call any other QBs by their nickname. I have to say their actual name, but I’m Burt to everyone."
I have typed "Bert" so many times in my blogging career, I now see "Burt" as a typo. God bless this sport.
As much as it Doubt a fired Arkansas coach is his namesake. (Although, would there be a better way to haze a sapling?) It could be a play on Burt Macklin, FBI agent. Burrow definitely strikes me as a Parks & Rec guy.
Sad but true: Whitney would leave me for Burt Macklin. When I told her that just now she laughed and said, "It's true. It's definitely true."
I can't promise this won't affect my feelings on Burt Baldwin going forward.
GO 'NEERS. The NCAA added an Early Signing Period, which is great from a #content perspective. While Urban Meyer never favored it, he is not your typical college football coach.
Overall, coaches seem to like it. Dana Holgorsen likes it because it keeps Ohio State out of his cabbage patch... for the most part.
From Tim May of The Columbus Dispatch:
“I think a lot of coaches actually liked it more than they thought they would,” Purdue coach Jeff Brohm said this month after speaking at the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association clinic. “And I think it was actually a positive for everybody (including the prospects) because the guys who had been committed for a while got to get it over with in December ... and you were able to focus on the few slots you had left.
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen laughed when he mentioned one positive in particular.
“It prevented Ohio State from stealing some of our guys,” he said. “They did get one (defensive end/tight end Alex Williams of Pickerington). ... But it’s been good. ... We worked hard to get a good 20-22 guys that we recruited for a long time, guys who maintained their allegiance and signed with us on that early date.”
West Virginia fans detest Ohio State fans. Ohio State fans don't even think about West Virginia fans.
That's because deep down, Mountaineer fans didn't need their coach admitting Ohio State can pluck them clean at will. They already knew that, even if only on a subconscious level.
WHAT'S IN A BALL? We know Spalding makes the best basketball in the world because the NBA uses it.
College basketball isn't as regulated as the NBA, though. It's a wild variable for which teams must account.
From The Toledo Blade:
In college hoops, there is no regulation basketball for regular-season games. Unlike college football, in which the offense always provides its own football no matter the location, the home team provides all of the game balls per NCAA rules.
Toledo is a Nike school that uses a Nike basketball for home games, but its ball rack at practice is a basketball buffet.
And it’s not a souvenir collection. The changes in basketballs are significant enough to Rockets coach Tod Kowalczyk that he has every brand of ball on hand so his team can practice with whatever it might see during its next game.
“It changes the game. It truly does,” Kowalczyk said.
Anybody that has played as little as two games of pickup basketball will agree with Kowalczyk.
If I were a Michigan fan, I would have spent my Sunday afternoon compiling a three-hour YouTube video detailing how Michigan's chicanery with the game ball cost Ohio State a key conference game.
LESSON TO LEARN. The silver lining of tragedies is they offer lessons in ensuring they never happen again. That's exactly what we're seeing in the aftermath of Ryan Shazier's spinal injury.
From Sports Illustrated:
“You’re going to see Shazier break on the ball, and he went in there with his head down, and that’s never good a thing,” Jon Gruden said during the initial replay on ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast. As medical staff attended to Shazier, Gruden added, “It’s really been the talk of the league—you never go in there with the crown of the helmet. Try to keep the helmet out of tackling. All you can do is hope and pray that Ryan Shazier is okay.”
[...]
Jerry Veshio of Quaker Valley High in Sewickley, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh, felt sick when he saw the Shazier injury. “It nauseated me,” he says. “As a coach, that’s your worst nightmare, to have a player go down like that and have a life-threatening, debilitating injury.”
After Veshio worked through the initial terror and said a few prayers for Shazier, he began to consider what this situation might mean for young football players. “I think this is definitely a teachable moment,” Veshio says. “Any time you have a negative incident, as a teacher—and coaches are teachers—you have to make people aware, so others don’t make the same mistake.”
All that's left at this point is Shazier regaining full walking ability and living a normal life.
THOSE WMDs. When a hospital declared Jahi McMath brain-dead, her family disagreed... Once near death, Tropicana the No. 2 hotel in Atlantic City... Couple mistakes Red Hot Chili Pipers for the Red Hot Chili Peppers... A Carnival cruise in the South Pacific descended into violent anarchy... Why was Clinton Township never annexed?
