Tuesday Skull Session

By Sarah Hardy on November 6, 2012 at 6:00 am
83 Comments

Hey there, everyone. Today is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, so you know what that means...

MACtion!

Tonight, Toledo, ranked #25 in the latest BCS standings, hosts Ball State on ESPN2. Counting the NFL, that gives us football every day of the week, which is the way it should be. #America

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't encourage you all to vote today—whether upvoting or downvoting, depending on the quality of comments you see around the site1. Just please be judicious with your choices.

BY THE BYE. While Buckeye fans have to figure out how to deal with the emptiness that accompanies a bye week2, most of the team seems to welcome a bit of a respite before facing Wisconsin and Michigan:

''I need the off week. I'm still battling injuries. Any extra time I can use to rest,'' cornerback Bradley Roby said. ''The bye week is going to give us a little more time for our academic situations and things like that. It's coming at a good time even though it took a while to get here.''

But that doesn't mean they're taking the week off. The team will still practice today, tomorrow, and Thursday and the players recognize that trips to Camp Randall should never be taken lightly, especially when, as Carlos Hyde noted, "There's a lot of things to work on." 

At the same time, the coaches are taking the opportunity to hit the recruiting trail. A perfect record only helps their pitch, according to Everett Withers:

''I'm anxious just to see. I've never been undefeated on the road recruiting,'' he said. ''I imagine it will be easy to go into that high school and talk to that high school coach and counselor with people knowing you're 10-0.''

All in all, it sounds like both the players and coaches are using the bye week productively.

SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR. The Plain Dealer's Doug Lesmerises took a look at this year's Heisman race, which at this point is still up in the air. The five players considered to be the top candidates are all part of undefeated teams: Braxton Miller, Kansas State's Collin Klein, Oregon's Kenjon Barner, Alabama's A.J. McCarron, and Notre Dame's Manti Te'o3

Lesmerises thinks that as in seven of the past nine years, the winner will be whoever is on the nation's #1 team at season's end. He also believes that Braxton's goal should be to get to New York:

Miller's race at this point is to get to New York. He has the highlights. He has the record. And he also has time. There will be plenty of Heisman talk in Miller's future, but the down year in the Big Ten isn't doing him any favors in 2012.

Chris Huston agrees:

As for Miller, he was always a dark horse in this campaign. However, he's performed quite well and is on the bubble as far as a possible visit to New York goes. It's just he can't win -- not this time, not with his numbers and not in the context of this race. However, he is set up well to be the Heisman front runner in 2013 and everything he does the rest of this season will serve to bolster that.

The Heisman Pundit claims the race is between Klein, Barner, and McCarron. The first two have great numbers and the latter put in a pedestrian effort against LSU until he led the Crimson Tide on a last-minute game-winning drive. 

If they turn the ball over a lot, I'm blaming these uniforms for not allowing the players to detect one another.The BB team going camo (via @OhioStateHoops)

PULLING RANK. During the bye week, BuckeyeNation's Austin Ward is putting together a list of the five best Buckeye performances so far this season. Coming it at #5 is Bradley Roby's day against Penn State. The nation's leader in passes defended, he totaled four pass breakups in that game, though he should have been credited with seven.

Despite Roby's strong season, BTN's Brent Yarina didn't include him in his most recent Big Ten Player Rankings. On defense, Ryan Shazier, who has nabbed back-to-back B1G defensive player of the week honors, and Big Hank are among his six. On offense, Braxton naturally leads the way and for the first time all season, Carlos Hyde made an appearance on the list. 

HOOP ARE YOU? After an exhibition game last week against Walsh, the basketball team will be decked out in camo when they start their season for real on Friday night. Yet Rob McCurdy of the Mansfield News Journal warns that they are suffering an identity crisis because apparently, "Thomas = points, Craft = defense" is not much of an identity. 

McCurdy wrote, "Right now the Buckeyes are a team that does a little bit of everything, but has mastered nothing so far in the preseason", which may be true, though many of the younger players look like they've made strides during the offseason. It might take a while for Ohio State to figure out who they are, but other than an early blowout win against Duke, last year's Final Four squad didn't start firing on all cylinders until the beginning of March. 

TOM BERATES. The Michigan State football team has had a disappointing year so far, losing in increasingly gut-wrenching (re: Sparty) fashion. The 5-5 Spartans have lost four conferences game by a total of 10 points and are still not bowl eligible.

None of that is an excuse for students not showing up to games, and after a big game against Nebraska last Saturday, Tom Izzo chewed them out for failing to fill up the student section:

"I sat there until the end. I don't want to hear about it being too cold. If it is, we've got a bunch of wimpy students. That was a beautiful day for a football game on Saturday, I loved it."

This isn't a problem unique to Michigan State. When one sport dominates any school, other teams can be overlooked. After all, Indiana has a chance to win the Big Ten in football and on Saturday, most of the IU students were probably rewatching the basketball team's exhibition game against Indiana Wesleyan for the 49th time. 

It boils down to this: you're only in college for a short time. Go to the games. 

THE CLICK OF IT. Kevin Garnett praises Jared Sullinger's basketball IQ... Ohio State target Dakari Johnson joins the reclassifying trend... Trevor Mbakwe has faith that Minnesota will make the NCAA tournament this season... Mack Brown is ready to outlaw horns down... Movie sets you can explore... Breaking Bad season five spoiler? (not really)... Superman's new sidekick: Neil DeGrasse Tyson... Examining the possible Boy Meets World spinoff.

  • 1 If you talk about the elections, though, you'll be setting yourself up for lots of downvotes, so don't do it. 
  • 2 Easy solution: watch the basketball team and then non-Ohio State football games on Saturday. But you should probably avoid Minnesota-Illinois.
  • 3Y u no Shazier?
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