Eleven Warriors

CINCINNATI – Ohio State fans have been cooped up for nearly five months, waiting for spring’s thaw to signal the start of the 2013 football season – even if it just a series of practices.

On the first play of Saturday’s spring game, Buckeye Nation got a glimpse of the souped-up Corvette that Urban Meyer said should be the best offense in the Big Ten. Braxton Miller connected with Evan Spencer for a 49-yard gain, and three plays later found Devin Smith open in the end zone for a 20-yard touchdown. The scoring drive took all of 52 seconds.

The air raid had begun. This Corvette did not rust during the cold, snowy winter.

Before a hearty crowd of 37,643 fans in Paul Brown Stadium, teams Scarlet and Gray combined for 438 passing yards and four touchdowns. Pesky 21 mile-per-hour wind gusts did nothing to deter a passing attack that ranked 101st last season.

“It was a pass-heavy game, an area that we weren’t very good at last year, an area that we have to get better in,” Meyer said. “I thought at times that Braxton Miller and a couple of the wideouts, Philly Brown in particular, did very well. It’s been a continuation of what started all spring and Philly Brown is turning into a legitimate All-Big Ten candidate at wide receiver for us, which we need.”

If you're not able to catch the spring game live and are waiting for the 7 p.m. BTN tape-delay, be warned: There be spoilers in this thread.

For those of you on Twitter, @KyleRowland is in the press box and will be providing color commentary.

Go Bucks!

Today is a special day for Ohio State football as it kicks off what ostensibly is the start of the upcoming football season by playing its annual spring game scrimmage in front of thousands of Ohio State students and Ohio State fans.

In lieu of the traditional Saturday Skull Session, this Saturday morning post will serve as a primer for everything you will need to know about Saturday's practice, including what you can expect to happen and how you can watch it.

What is the spring game? The spring game is one of 15 practices allocated to college football teams during the spring. When put this way, it is not much of a "game" at all, though colleges are given autonomy in how they go about structuring the practice. To that end, college football programs take one of their 15 spring practices, use it to approximate an actual football contest, and promote it as such to its fan base. It transforms a normal practice into something that can generate revenue for the program.

When is the spring game? The spring game will kick off at 1 p.m. today.

Where is it? Well, it's not in Columbus this time around. Ohio Stadium is undergoing some minor renovations, derivative of the last stadium expansion completed in 2001. Don't get too excited about these renovations, though. They're more structural than cosmetic.

Aaron Craft threw out the first pitch for the Columbus Clippers Friday night at Huntington Park. The pitch was a solid effort as far as these things go: decent heat, over the plate and a bit high just to let the imaginary batter know that the next pitch was going to force a change in the possession arrow.

RELATED: Denard Robinson throws like Denard Robinson at Comerica Park.

Ohio State has gotten off to a strong start in adding offensive linemen and defenders to their 2014 recruiting class. But they are still lacking one thing in the class: Offensive playmakers.

Kitt is one of the top juniors in the nation

The Buckeyes hosted many top players on campus this past weekend. One of these elite players was Tyrone (GA) Sandy Creek wide receiver Demarre Kitt, who fits the bill of a playmaker on the offensive side of the ball.

At 6-2/180, Kitt boasts offers from the likes of Ohio State, Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Notre Dame, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, USC, Wisconsin, and many other big-name schools.

Kitt took his third trip to Columbus to check out the Ohio State campus Thursday through Sunday of last week. He definitely enjoyed his trip and now has the Buckeyes as his sole leader.

We caught up with Kitt to learn more about what he saw on his visit, which players/recruits he hung out with, and more.

Keep reading to learn more about about one of Ohio State's top targets in the 2014 class, Demarre Kitt.

Three weeks from today — on May 3 — Kelvin Ransey will turn 55 years old. Some of you are too young to remember Ransey, a basketball quarterback, topped with a mushroom cloud of an afro, who owned St. John Arena from the 1976-77 through 1979-80 seasons.

Ransey owned St. John Arena from 1976-77 through 1979-80.

For some reason, Ransey's name is often overlooked when discussing the best basketball players in Ohio State history. If he was before your time, picture a smaller Jim Jackson with slightly better ball-handling skills.

Kelvin was a product of Macomber High School in his native Toledo. As a youngster, Ransey’s love of the game took a while to kick in. Despite being talented, a lack of motivation led to being cut from teams in middle school — he wasn’t into the trash-talking culture of basketball. But at Macomber he found his passion and became a dominant player in the City League.

Ransey took the Macmen to the state’s regionals in his junior year, but Macomber fell to Elyria in an epic triple-overtime battle. The next year the squad lost a key player in John Flowers, who transferred to Sylvania, derailing a potential state championship run in 1975-76.

Despite the retirement of legendary coach Fred Taylor in 1976 after his worst season in Columbus (6-20), Ransey accepted a scholarship offer to Ohio State and enrolled that fall.

Freshman Year

Ransey was a savvy player, but he wasn’t terribly big. He stood a smidge over 6-foot-1 and weighed less than 190 pounds. He became a freshman starter under first-year head coach Eldon Miller for what would be a pretty bad Ohio State team in 1976-77. His fellow starters included captain and point guard Larry Bolden, center Jim Ellinghausen, and forwards Terry Burris and Tony Hall.

Around the Oval is Eleven Warriors' weekly love letter to Ohio State sports that don't get the coverage they should.

Another week, another five games for Buckeye baseball, beginning with three games at Minnesota. The first game came off the back of two midweek wins for Ohio State, and it included a 20-hour delay due to snow which stopped the game on Friday and had to be finished the next day. Buckeye bats were about as cold at the surrounding weather as they had only two hits through the first four innings. In the home half of the fourth, the Gophers offense struck first through a single, double and dropped fly ball to lead, 3-0.

The festivities were halted after the fifth with the difference still three runs, and when things began again on Saturday, Minnesota notched another three runs in the sixth and one in the eighth to finish 7-0 winners. Left-hander Tom Windle and rightie Alec Crawford combined to give up only three Buckeye hits.

McKinney got his third win against West Virginia 

Game two quickly displayed more Ohio State offense than the first one as the Scarlet & Gray scored five after three innings. Kirby Pellant tripled home Jacob Bosiokovic before Brad Hallberg grounded to second to score Pellant. In the third Aaron Gretz's single scored two, and it was he who leisurely jogged into home after Hallberg was walked with the bases loaded.

Minnesota scored in their half of the third before Mother Nature intervened again. This time it was the rain, and another postponement meant the game would finish on Sunday morning. Ryan Riga took the hill for Ohio State and gave up one run in the fourth but was solid after that. David Fathalikhani and Trace Dempsey closed out the win and the Buckeyes bounced back with a 5-2 triumph. 

The rubber match saw both pitchers in control with both teams combining for only four hits. Unfortunately for the Buckeyes they only had one, and among the three Gopher connections was a solo home run by Tony Skjefte, a drive that proved to be the game's only run as the hosts won, 1-0, to win the weekend series. Troy Kuhn had Ohio State's only hit as Brian King's solid pitching effort went to waste. 

West Virginia came to town on Tuesday and the Buckeyes made quick work of the visiting Mountaineers. Three runs in the first two innings were more than enough with Brett McKinney giving up one hit over five innings of work and four Buckeye relievers combining to only concede three more. The lead remained at three until the eighth inning when two fielding errors helped Ohio State bat around and score six more runs to conclude the 9-0 win. 

The state of Ohio is the seventh most populous state in the nation, filled with more than 11.5 million people. And it seems like every last one of them is a Buckeye fan. The state covers 44,825 square miles, but it’s those 80 square miles in the southwest corner of the state and its nearly 300,000 citizens where the chasm exists.

You can look far and wide in every area of the state and you’ll quickly realize Buckeye Nation is flourishing at every turn, even in Toledo, where Ann Arbor is less than an hour’s drive. Cincinnati, though, has always been the outcast when it comes to Ohio State fandom. And as a result, it hasn’t always been an automatic victory for the Buckeyes when a Cincinnati-area kid was set to announce his college decision.

The Universities of Cincinnati, Louisville and Kentucky all have large footprints in Cincinnati, as well as Notre Dame due to the high concentration of Catholics residing in the Queen City.

Jordan Hicks (Texas), Ben Martin (Tennessee), Spencer Ware (LSU) and Dwayne Stanford (Oregon) are recent examples of Cincinnati kids who were recruited heavily by Ohio State but opted to go elsewhere. Countless Moeller, St. Xavier and Elder players have spurned the Buckeyes too, choosing instead to attend Notre Dame.

“There does seem to be some sort of disconnect,” Ohio State cornerbacks coach Kerry Coombs, a longtime high school coach at powerhouse Cincinnati Colerain, said. “Coach Meyer is working really hard to bridge whatever gap there might be.”

In the past there have been high-profile Buckeyes from Cincinnati – Carlos Snow, Greg Frey and DeVier Posey to name a few – but the list is far smaller than the state’s other major metro areas. And unlike Cleveland, Akron or Youngstown, where a scholarship offer can signal a slam dunk for a commitment, coaches must grind all the way to signing day when recruiting Cincinnati prospects.

In recent years, it’s gotten even more difficult with UC racking up 10-win seasons and BCS bowl bids. The switch from Conference USA to the Big East was a boon for Cincinnati football. Now the school is pining to join the ACC.

Four years ago the unthinkable happened. The Bearcats went undefeated during the regular season, while Ohio State lost twice. Brian Kelly left Cincinnati to become the head coach at Notre Dame, strengthening the Fighting Irish’s grip on Greater Cincinnati recruits.

In his first two recruiting classes, Meyer has bagged Adolphus Washington and Jalin Marshall, while Sam Hubbard committed for the class of 2014. Washington and Andrew Norwell are both Cincinnatians that start for the Buckeyes.

Hello, and welcome to the Skull Session.

For all you football addicts out there, you're about to get your last big fix for a while; the spring game on Saturday will be at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati. It looks fun!

It'll be a bit shorter than usual, as quarters will only be 10 minutes long. As long as they play at a vigorous pace and look solid on offense and defense, I could live with even two-minute quarters.

The flashiest position battles are always the "skill positions", but this year it seems like there's more certainty in the backfield than last year. The starting running backs are pretty set, with Carlos Hyde and Rod Smith holding the top two spots and Bri'onte Dunn and Warren Ball competing for the third spot. This Braxton guy seems to have a pretty tight hold of the quarterback position, too, giving some spotlight to Kenny G and Cardale Jones for a change.

A more potent position matchup appears at wide receiver, where Urban Meyer has said that he only has "five or six" consistent receivers when he wants 10. No matter what happens on Saturday, don't get too optimistic about another option having a breakthrough performance. It's been done.

Other matchups, like starting right tackle, and defensive line will be the most competitive; if you can pull yourself away from watching the ball on plays, keep those lesser positions in mind. Spring performances mean a lot more for these guys than the ball-carriers, so pay attention.

 IT'S A RING THING. Oh, Mark May. You don't improve our lives, but you sure make them more entertaining.

Following the awarding of rings to a team that went 12-0 and won the Leaders Division of the Big Ten, everyone's favorite punching bag had some HOT opinions that had to be shared:

As April rolls along, the commitments keep rolling in.

Berger is the newest addition to the '14 class

The latest player to pledge to the Buckeyes is Cleveland (OH) St. Ignatius linebacker Kyle Berger.

The 6-3/205 linebacker tallied 44 tackles for loss to go along with 10 sacks in his breakout junior season.

Berger became the seventh member of Ohio State's 2014 recruiting class after choosing the Bucks over Michigan and a host of other schools including Arkansas, Michigan State, Penn State, Tennessee, UCLA, and West Virginia.

The Cleveland native has been to Columbus on multiple recruiting trips, but ultimately decided Ohio State was the right place for him a couple of weekends ago during his most recent visit.

We caught up with Berger to find out what led him to committing to Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes.

Keep reading to learn more about the newest Buckeye, Kyle Berger.