Programming note: The women's basketball team hosts Central Michigan in St. John Arena for the second round of the NCAA Tournament at 6:30 p.m. on ESPN2.
ICYMI:
- Kyle Snyder capped his Buckeye career as a three-time national champion.
- The men's hockey team earned the first NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed in program history and will face Princeton on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. on ESPNU.
- The top five moments of the men's basketball season.
- Irish Invasion: Ohio State and Notre Dame clashing over several 2019 prospects.
- Keita Bates-Diop yet undecided about potential NBA future.
- Reserve your (or your business’) spot next to the life-size statue of Woody Hayes coming to Newcomerstown!
Word of the Day: Frisson.
NOT HOLTMANN'S IDEA. You might have looked at today's header photo and thought it featured a knackered Urban Meyer in the process of dumping Michigan for the sixth time in a row.
That's actually his reaction while watching Gonzaga oust the men's basketball team. The Buckeyes looked like they might get dropped by 50 before clawing back and falling short.
Before the game, the team managers were spotted wearing polos from the Phil Knight Invitational, the tournament in which the Bulldogs keelhauled the Buckeyes by 29.
I figured anything relating to that tournament would have been burned in a trashcan on a tarmac in remote Oregon. I was wrong.
Ohio State staffers are wearing the PK80 polos from the beatdown in November against Gonzaga. Clever bit of motivation from Chris Holtmann. pic.twitter.com/3nD1v85oJs
— Austin Ward (@AWardSports) March 17, 2018
While it's fair to assume Holtmann, who didn't exactly hide his team's motivation from hatin' ass journalists, would be pulling the strings on a move like that, he actually had nothing to do with it.
From dispatch.com:
When the game between Kentucky and Buffalo came to a close and the Buckeyes began making their way to the court, one manager after another emerged wearing identical shirts: the black, short-sleeved polo shirts worn for the PK80 emblazoned with the logo on the left sleeve.
After Ohio State’s season came to an end with the 90-84 loss, Holtmann made it very clear from inside the locker room: he had nothing to do with the wardrobe choice.
“Yeah, that wasn’t my idea,” he said. “Good idea, but I can’t take credit for it. We had plenty of motivation, but obviously the mangers went off on their own script there and came up with the idea. I guess it’s a good idea. Good for them. Our managers do an unbelievable job and they feel a part of this thing and I think they were as hungry to get to the Sweet Sixteen and beat Gonzaga as any of them.”
On Sunday, a manager detailed how deep it went:
We have two polos, we wore red on Thursday and black on Saturday. Its simple.
— Luke Gebbie (@Luke_Gebbie) March 18, 2018
Props to Holtmann on how he handled this. A lot of coaches fresh off a disappointing tournament exit would've signed a manager's death warrant on live television. It's cool to see he has his team's backs—all the way down to the managers' sartorial decisions.
BOBBY LANDERS: READY TO LEAD. Tracy Sprinkle is off to take his shot at the NFL, the next level of football where he must answer questions about his size and athleticism.
Sprinkle was the spiritual talisman of a loaded defense line. Thankfully for Urban Meyer, he has another undersized, former three-star prospect from Ohio ready to help fill both leadership voids.
Folks call him, "B.B. Landers."
From Tom Orr of the theozone.net:
“He’s doing well,” Johnson said. “They’re the guys leading the pack, and to lead the pack you’ve got to be good every day. That’s what they’re learning how to do, and the best way to lead is by example, and that’s what BB is doing right now.”
Landers said he’s been impressed with the younger players on the defensive line.
“The biggest thing I like about them is that they’re hungry. They’re eager to learn, they go hard, they’re learning in the meeting room with chalk talk. They’re learning on the field,” he said.
Landers taking on leadership responsibility would be a boon for the defensive line, as he already has a higher on-the-field ceiling than Sprinkle. He should be able to feast with the attention opposing offensive lines will have show Buckeye defensive ends.
T.P. STILL EARNING CLICKS. Terrelle Pryor, Ezekiel Elliott, and Torrance Gibson are three former Buckeyes that Ohio State fans love to read about. Any story featuring one of those three will do 40% more traffic than comparable stories not featuring them. If all of them combined into one story, it would set records.
While Pryor landing back with the Browns would be the best result for business, Pryor catching passes on another Super Bowl contender in Seattle wouldn't be bad, either.
From cleveland.com:
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Browns receiver Terrelle Pryor will visit the Seahawks on Sunday, a league source told cleveland.com.
[...]
In fact, it was Seahawks GM John Schneider who initially tried to switch Pryor to receiver after he was traded there as a quarterback from the Raiders in 2014. Instead, Pryor resisted the move, and was waived in the final cuts.
"He just wasn't interested in the thought of it,'' coach Pete Carroll told cleveland.com in an email in 2016 when Pryor was in the midst of his 1,000-yard season. "We thought as coaches that he'd be incredible at it. So none of us are surprised, we're all just disappointed that we weren't able to convince him earlier, because he would've been a fantastic player."
It's going to be hilarious when Pryor switches back to good and posts another 1,000-yard season—just enough to earn another one-year offer from another franchise.
NFL teams are going to sign him on athleticism alone until he's 35. Miraculously, Pryor doesn't turn 29 until June!
GET DUMPED THEN... ARCHIE GRIFFIN!? "Mount Rushmore" is a meme sports fans love to know despite Mount Rushmore being a terrible monument to visit. You stand like 2,000 yards away and stare at some carved rocks. Neat.
Kyle Snyder, the youngest American wrestling Olympic gold medalist and three-time NCAA champion, punched his ticket onto the monument this weekend in Cleveland.
That means a legend must go to make room for Snyder...
From Mark Podolski of news-herald.com:
The times they are a changing, at least from this corner. The OSU Mount Rushmore needs a new face, and someone has to go.
Goodbye Archie, hello Kyle Snyder.
Good googly moogly! Podolski must not be an Ohio native because otherwise he would know degradation of Archie Griffin is a capital offense in the Buckeye State.
Whom does he have staying on?
Jesse Owens >> He broke four world records May 25, 1935 at the Western (later the Big Ten) Conference track and field meet in the 100-yard and 220-yard dashes, the 220-yard low hurdles, and the long jump. Three years later, he won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Games, and became a world superstar.
Jack Nicklaus >> The Golden Bear is best known for winning a record 18 major golf tournaments, including six Masters. But while at Ohio State he was also medalist at the 1959 and 1961 U.S. Amateur tournaments, and won the 1961 NCAA Championship. For good measure, he took second at the U.S. Open — while still in college. He turned pro in November 1961.
Jerry Lucas >> As the years pass, Lucas becomes more and more underrated, and perhaps even underappreciated in OSU lore and beyond. In the three seasons he played at OSU, the Buckeyes were 78-6 and played in three NCAA championship games and won the 1960 title. He was the national player of the year in 1961 and 1962. In 1960, Lucas starred on the 1960 U.S. Olympic basketball team that won gold. As an NBA player, he won the NBA title with the Knicks in 1972-73, and became the only basketball player to win a championship in high school, college, the NBA and the Olympics.
It seems sacrilegious for Ohio State's Mt. Rushmore not to feature a football player.
Podolski does get props for the Jerry Lucas shoutout—a lot of Buckeye fans forget about him because he played for a mediocre coach on an also-ran like the Boston Celtics in the NBA.
If it were up to me, I'd dynamite the visage of the Golden Bear off the mountaintop if only to watch the tears of Upper Arlington and golf fanatics worldwide.
THOSE WMDs. A treasury of your best weird grandpa stories... Welcome to the ultra-long haul... Chiropractors are bullshit... Army develops pizza MREs, slated for assembly March 2018... Qui Chin, beheaded by Imperial forces, was the Chinese Joan of Arc... Where the hell is our cat?
