I got properly whipped in our bracket challenge and must concede victory to one champion: AaronCraftOSU, who I am just going to assume is the actual Aaron Craft who went to OSU.
Congrats for winning our bracket challenge, Aaron Craft of OSU. Your bracket was very good.
ICYMI
- The coaching staff has no egos as they work together.
- Jonathon Cooper hasn't reached his lofty goals yet.
- Garrett Wilson becomes the first early enrollee to shed his black stripe.
- Ohio State's not going to use the tight end this year either, but we'll still write about it.
- Did you know: longtime Buckeye basketball head coach Harold Olsen started the NCAA Tournament?
Word of the Day: Tumultuary.
HASKINS' POTENTIAL PLUMMET. In January, Dwayne Haskins was almost unanimously considered the top quarterback in the draft. Then Arizona's love affair with Kyler Murray happened, and Haskins was bumped to No. 2 on almost every mock draft.
Now, folks are speculating he could drop even further.
There's this from Peter King of Pro Football Talk on NBCSports.com:
6. New York Giants: Drew Lock, QB, Missouri. Doubt GM Dave Gettleman will do this, or take any quarterback here. (In fact, I keep hearing Dwayne Haskins is sinking, and may be the fourth passer picked in this draft.) Gettleman seems to have more of a mind to fix his lines in this draft. But a franchise passer trumps all. Lock or Haskins should be the pick here—unless the Giants think it’s a lock that Lock will be there at 17.
And then there's this:
After speaking with a few different teams, I definitely get the feeling that Dwayne Haskins draft stock was more media created than team driven. I see Haskins falling on draft day and I think the chances are increasing that he is not the second QB off the board.
— Lance Zierlein (@LanceZierlein) April 6, 2019
And this, from Dane Brugler of The Athletic ($) that has Haskins going No. 11 overall as the third quarterback taken after Missouri's Drew Lock.
11. Cincinnati Bengals – Dwayne Haskins, QB, Ohio State
Haskins might be the toughest prospect to project in the first round because opinions on him are split around the league. However, the Bengals, who have an established veteran as a starter, would be an interesting landing spot where he can develop under the watchful eye of first-year head coach Zac Taylor.
Take this all with an extreme grain of salt, because we are very much in the thick of #LyingSzn. Any information coming out at this point could just be a smokescreen or a straight-up lie.
There's a solid chance none of this info is real. I mean, at this point last season, even the best prognosticators were fairly convinced the Browns would be taking Sam Darnold with the first overall pick, and then it switched like 24 hours before the draft.
Regardless, the smoke is there. And I think it's safe to say Simba sees it, too.
This chip is on my shoulder and its staying there..
— Dwayne Haskins, Jr (@dh_simba7) April 8, 2019
On the bright side, falling in the draft would theoretically mean that Haskins ends up on a better team, which could be good in the long run. Unless Dane Brugler is correct with his Bengals projection, in which case, God help him.
THE BUCKEYES ARE IN! Book your tickets now, folks, the Buckeyes are going to Tampa. Joe Lunardi has spoken.
While y'all were watching (or ignoring) Virginia vs. Texas Tech, the notorious bracket-knower was hard at work and dropped his first projection for next year's NCAA Tournament, and he's got the Buckeyes in as a No. 7 seed.
With all due respect to Lunardi, with whom my loyalties run deep, he's wrong. A No. 7 seed implies there are at least 24 better teams in the field, and that's not happening.
Hell, Jeff Borzello of ESPN has the Buckeyes as a top-10 team entering next season in his way-too-early top-25.
10. Ohio State Buckeyes
The Buckeyes have overachieved in back-to-back years, going to the second round in each of Chris Holtmann's two seasons in Columbus. Next year, though, they will enter the season with some expectations. Ohio State loses CJ Jackson (31 starts) and Keyshawn Woods (15 starts) but replaces them with five-star point guard DJ Carton and four-star forwards Alonzo Gaffney and EJ Liddell. Kaleb Wesson is an anchor inside, and starters Andre Wesson and Luther Muhammad are also back.
Even if you think that's optimistic, Sporting News wasn't that far off, putting the Buckeyes at No. 14. Ohio State won't have be worse than a No. 5 seed, and could be as high as a No. 3 seed.
Here I am getting worked up about a bracket projection done almost a calendar year in advance. It ain't healthy but that's the life of a sports words poster. Give me a 2021 bracketology and I'll be mad online about that one, too.
D.J. CARTON WORKING. Speaking of next year, I've heard D.J. Carton is going to be pretty damn good, and from the looks of it, he's doing all he can to make sure he's as good as he can be before coming to Columbus.
If you're into 14-minute videos of a high schooler doing various drills one-on-one with a coach in an empty gym with absolutely no production and minimal editing, you can get a behind the scenes look at his prep work.
Ohio State's losing C.J. Jackson and Keyshawn Woods, but I think there's an extremely solid chance the Buckeye backcourt actually improves this season. People forget, C.J. Walker is a basketball player, too!
SALUTE TO THE GOAT. Ohio State football SID Jerry Emig – world famous on Twitter dot com as @BuckeyeNotes – is celebrating his 25th year of being the best in the business.
From Austin Ward:
The Ohio State sports information director had replied to hundreds of emails. He was double-dipping in a second sport, helping run the operations at the NCAA National Basketball Tournament while also keeping tabs on his responsibilities as the primary contact for a football program with a nonstop, yearlong news cycle. And he was running on almost no sleep thanks to health complications that sent one of his sons to the hospital during that March week that was perhaps his busiest time of the year.
But just like it has for the last 25 years in the profession, Emig kept smiling, kept joking and kept on piling up statistics with the kind of passion that few can match. It’s never waned, and it might actually be stronger than ever as he prepares to be honored for his longevity this summer at the CoSIDA convention in June with a 25-Year Award.
“Personally, I spent 50 hours from Thursday to Tuesday down at intensive care, then it was just texting updates with my wife Jody,” Emig said after a football practice at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. “And then [professionally], during the week of the NCAA Tournament from Monday morning until halftime of our sixth game, I had sent 420 emails. I guess that speaks to the life balance that you need to have, and that you have to try to have. But I’ll tell you, I’ve been an SID longer than I’ve been a husband and a dad or virtually anything else. It’s something that just makes me really, really proud — because I love being a sports information director.
Jerry is an absolute legend who works his ass off at everything he does, whether it's keeping the media folk in line at football media availabilities, or manning the podium in the French Field House for the women's NCAA Tournament.
Or, on occasion, being Urban Meyer's muscle:
MARCUS CROWLEY AIN'T TIGER WOODS. Folks, we're in no danger of losing Marcus Crowley to the PGA Tour.
Justin Fields posted a video on his Instagram story of Crowley taking a stroke at Topgolf, and things went... Poorly. Especially for the golf club.
I cannot throw stones in this situation because I live in the glassiest of glass houses. The only golf clubs I've ever swung were inside at neon balls under blacklights while a glow-in-the-dark giraffe cheered me on.
This weekend though, I will be giving Topgolf a try. But unlike Crowley, you can be damn sure there won't be any video of my failures (though that's more to protect myself from liability and damages than my own embarrassment).
LINK LOCKER. College students scam Apple out of nearly $1 million using fake iPhones... If Mars once had water, where did it all go?... A woman lived for 99 years with organs in all the wrong places and never knew it... The wild world of trust funds for pets... A gloriously inept sailor vs. the storm of the century... From lawyer to meth labs, a man's double life almost killed him...
