The Art of Aaron Craft
Sports Illustrated's Alexander Wolff spent some time with Aaron Craft last week and the result is a fat profile of Ohio State's star guard in the newest issue of SI.
Buckeye fans know No. 4's story pretty well by now, but even the biggest Craft fans will learn something new about the "nation's most creative defender." Take his burgeoning film career:
Ohio State video coordinator Greg Paulus fields so many requests for a Craft-on-defense teaching tape—"on the ball, off the ball, steals, help, multiple efforts"—that he keeps an edit on his desktop, ready to burn on request.
Or his alpha status on campus:
[Director of basketball operations David] Egelhoff says he can track Craft's movements around campus on Twitter, thanks to breathless updates of female students.
Or his massive brain:
After the Big Ten Network filmed him doing a Rubik's demo last season, Craft mock-complained that the athletic department treats him like a novelty act—"Just your monkey on a unicycle, to be trotted out." Nonetheless, in honor of Pi Day, March 14 (or 3.14), he memorized the familiar mathematical constant to 68 decimal places, one for each team in the NCAA tournament.
Yes. Our monkey on a unicycle, locking up opposing point guards.
Comments
Something we should step back and appreciate is the quality of guys that Matta recruits. Not only do they stay out of trouble, but they also almost always seem like friendly, likeable guys you'd want to hang out with.
Story time: My girlfriend was going to the Britney Spears concert at the Schott a few years back. She got on the bus, and (if my memory services me right), Lauderdale, Turner and Hill were on the bus leading all of these girls who were going to the concert in Britney Spears songs.
I can totally believe that story. I remember Titus pointing out that Turner used to listen to Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" on repeat in the team bus.
Pi day, which is better known around the world as my birthday...i expect cake from all of you.
Cake rather than Pi?
...joke bombs...poster embarrassed of self
Here ya go:
Because I'll forget by then!
You can kill a fly with your slipper or a cannon. Either way, the fly dies. -Ramzy
^GLaDOS knows how to celebrate birthdays
"But I'm tryin' Ringo. I'm tryin', real hard, to be the shepherd"
This is a triumph
I'm making a note here...huge success
You can kill a fly with your slipper or a cannon. Either way, the fly dies. -Ramzy
Special kid, no doubt about that.
Kevin
OH!!!!!
Proud parent of a Senior at The Ohio State University
The only thing I can do better than Aaron Craft....I can do 84 digits of pi
Sorry Urban, Woody is still my favorite
They should totally release the "Craft on Defense" video. I'd love to watch that.
Too bad the NCAA wants to keep student-athletes from earning a living from their skills - Craft could make a killing either peddling those DVDs or running a roundball defense bootcamp...
Agreed. This video belongs on youtube or the OSU website.
Love this kid...
It was in one of the skullys, maybe elsewhere....where I first realized other fanbases think he is a dirty player......This blew my mind. Hard working, scrappy, annoying......All yes, but I never thought he was dirty, or gets away with hacking all game.....Maybe Im just being a homer but I think if anything, he gets called for touch fouls as much as anyone else.......
He has said multiple times that he fouls on practically every play. The logic being that the ref can't call them all fouls. So I think it's how you define dirty. By the sounds of it, other fanbases think it means "fouls a lot." If that's the case, then yeah, he's probably dirty. But I don't think that's how you define dirty in a sports sense. I think there is a certain dick-ish-ness that is a prerequiste for being a dirty player, which is just a quality I do not see in Aaron Craft. Smartass, yes; dick, no. I know a lot of Kentucky fans and all they really say is that his defense is way overrated, but never anything about him being dirty.
Basketball is the only sport I can think of that uses fouling as a legit strategy. Hard to see how one could then be considered "dirty."
I can say with confidence that if Craft were on another team I would hate him. Mostly out of jealousy and annoyance. That said, I absolutely love that he's a buckeye and he seems like a genuinely good dude that is maximizing his talent and his stage. He's a great representative of the University