Good news! Ohio State picked a great year to get dumped by a much lower seed. Everyone's doing it!
We define an upset as a team seeded five spots or more lower than their opponent. We've already set the record with 11 such occurrences. We're midway through the second round.
— David Worlock (@DavidWorlock) March 22, 2021
Word of the Day: Poignant.
BRUTAL HONESTY. If you'd like to know how exactly Ohio State got bounced in the first round by a No. 15 seeded school named after a televangelist prosperity gospel grifter, the answer, according to CJ Walker, is both simple an infuriating: they got cocky.
“It's most definitely challenging just because the Big Ten tournament last week, we played really well against some really good teams – Purdue, Illinois, Michigan. We beat those teams, obviously not in a championship, but we played really good against top opponent teams. So coming into this game, it's most definitely mental over physical. So just kind of took it for granted thinking we could just come in here and win a game. Obviously in March you can't do that. Oral Roberts just took advantage of that, and they made the right plays at the right time.”
I don't think I've ever in my life heard a player straight-up admit to not taking an opponent seriously, so I guess props to CJ for the honesty here. Or maybe I would have been better off never hearing this? Who's to say!
Regardless, Ohio State also hit fewer threes than I had beverages during the game and shot 50 percent from the free throw line. You won't win many games like that, no matter how hard you try.
NO, PLEASE. I'm not sure I could draw up a bigger punch in the dick to follow a first-round exit than the program's all-time winningest coach un-retiring to coach a conference rival just days later, but folks, that might be where we're at!
That would be Matta, who directed Ohio State to a pair of NCAA Final Fours while winning 5 Big Ten regular-season championships and 4 Big Ten Tournaments with the Buckeyes. Matta gave Stevens his first coaching job at Butler in 2000.
Matta, 53, stepped away from Ohio State in 2017 because of health issues and a declining record. Although Matta has been mentioned for openings at UCLA, Georgia, Pittsburgh and other schools, he has remained out of the game for four seasons, living north of Indianapolis.
If Matta was the choice, he could start this week.
I'll say this, the annual "will Thad Matta return to coaching?" dance is a hell of a lot less fun when the team in question will have to compete with my team on the court and in recruiting every year.
Then again, there's nothing Indiana's basketball program (or athletic department as a whole, for that matter) has done in my life that would lead me to believe they're about to make a good hire, so I guess I'll just trust the process here.
WHAT MAKES A QB? Ohio State may have gotten dumped in the first round, but the basketbucks did successfully manage to keep us invested long enough to carry us from football season to spring practice, which honestly is more than some previous teams have been able to do.
And there's nothing better to take your mind off a crushing basketball loss than a good old fashioned spring quarterback battle.
With three players all ranked in the national top 50 of their respective classes at one point, physical skills are not really in question. The final outcome could be decided by intangibles. Day said he wants someone who can learn every day and “not make the same mistake twice.” That’s not an expectation to play perfect. It’s an expectation that the next QB must adapt on the fly.
“You don’t just jump on a bike and start riding,” Day said. “You’re gonna make mistakes. You’re gonna fall. But how quickly can you make that correction the next day? If you’re making the same mistake for two or three days? That’s that’s not a good sign for quarterback.
“Two, how quickly can you have the answers to the test? We can’t in a meeting go through every single scenario that a quarterback would encounter. ... I think anticipating what’s going on on defense as opposed to reacting is the key to quarterback play.”
As this battle begins, I am certain of two things:
- Ryan Day will pick the best, most capable quarterback of the trio to be the starter.
- There will be fans calling for the starter to be benched by week two regardless of how he performs.
That's just how things go in Columbus.
OHIO STATE'S NEWEST LINEBACKER? Steele Chambers played both sides of the ball in high school and has a name fitting of a of a linebacker. And based on where he's lined up in these pictures, that might be his new home.
Blessed. pic.twitter.com/OjqfMcCxUr
— Evan Pryor (@evanpryor3) March 19, 2021
This would make all the sense in the world given that Ohio State's running backs room is suddenly overflowing, but there's also a chance I'm just reading way too far into things and this is just some positional drill. He is still wearing a red jersey after all.
But hey, it's the offseason. What do you want from me?
SONG OF THE DAY. "All Downhill From Here" by New Found Glory.
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