Skull Session: Evan Turner Texted Chris Holtmann, Nate Ebner Chases a Gold Medal, and How Teams Could Use Extra Scholarships

By Kevin Harrish on March 16, 2021 at 5:15 am
CJ Walker is grabbing the ball in today's skull session.
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Be right back, I'm exchanging all my currency for Duane Dollars.

I haven't gotten into the crypto game yet, but this would sure tempt me...

Word of the Day: Pellucid.

 FOUR-DAY WAR. Hand up, I had zero expectations that Ohio State would be playing for the Big Ten Tournament title on Sunday. Hell, if you asked me before the tournament, I probably would have been happy with just one or two wins.

But the Buckeyes made a run and damn near won the whole thing. And people took notice, including a Buckeye legend.

... As this year’s team was battling Illinois to what would become an overtime loss in Sunday’s Big Ten tournament title game at Lucas Oil Stadium, (Evan) Turner was watching and cheering – and not just for that game. Reaching the title game after three high-level wins in as many days was a feat itself, and in the immediate aftermath of the 91-88 loss Turner had to get that message across.

Moments after the game, as the Illini were celebrating their first conference tournament championship in 16 years, Turner texted Holtmann.

“I told him the way the guys stuck together and battled through a four-day war made me proud to be a Buckeye,” Turner said. “And I wished him luck in the future.”

I know this is a small gesture, but I just love the fact that E.T. not only cared enough to watch every game of the tournament run, but he felt the need to reach out to a head coach that didn't recruit him to tell him how proud he was of his team.

This Buckeye basketball program, man.

 TODAY I LEARNED... I feel like it's going to take me a solid half a decade to fully grasp all the rule changes, waivers, and ramifications of the NCAA giving every player another year of eligibility.

But here's a new one I hadn't heard: turns out, a team gets the extra roster spots for a senior whether that senior returns or not.

The NCAA is allowing schools to go over the limit by however many fourth-year seniors or redshirt seniors were on the 2020 roster.

“For us, we’ve got 85 scholarships and then we’ve got six seniors that decided to stay, so we’re technically at 91,” the first source said. “Let’s say you wanted to hold six spots from seniors, but you wanted to stay at 85 and not go over. There were schools that said, ‘I don’t want to risk it with this kid in the 2021 class and I want to save those spots for the 2022 class.’ Technically you could’ve done that.”

I cannot even begin to digest what that could possibly mean for the Buckeyes in the short term or the long term, and I think there's a solid chance I'll just never have to deal with it because Ryan Day seems pretty committed to just sticking keeping the roster at or near 85 scholarships regardless of any extra years or waivers.

And honestly, God bless him for that. Because this bloggers' brain is just way too small to be dealing with all of this for the next four or five years.

 EBNER EYEING OLYMPIC RETURN. One of the more impressive two sport-stars in Buckeye history, three-time Super Bowl champ Nate Ebner is looking to make a return to the Olympics in Rugby Sevens – and this time he wants to bring home some hardware.

Ebner hopes to participate in another opening ceremony at the Olympics this year. Beginning today, he will join approximately 30 players trying out for the 12 spots on the U.S. team coached by Mike Friday that will compete in the XXXII Olympiad, which is scheduled to begin July 23 in Tokyo. The Games were postponed for a year because of the pandemic.

"We are very excited to welcome Nate back into the pack," Friday said. "He is not only a talented athlete, rugby player and Olympian, he is a durable individual who knows how to grind and is selfless for the cause.

"Nate is an authentic, good man who carries himself with humility, has a burning desire in his eyes to achieve and a passion to embed rugby and its values in the American sporting landscape. He is a Dawg, a Pioneer and will be up for the challenge as we look ahead to Tokyo."

...

"Not getting a medal in that last Olympics is something that really bothers me," Ebner said. "When I reflect on what's important in my life, if I'm being honest, that was high priority. People say, 'You were the guy who won a gold medal in the Olympics,' and I'm like, 'No, we didn't win a medal.' Not winning a medal, especially when I thought that we had the team to do it, and as I look at the growth in the last five years, we definitely have an even better chance this time around. It's something I would really like to be a part of."

If he does end up with a medal, my research (which was just me scrolling through Wikipedia for 10 minutes) tells me he would be just the second person ever to win a Super Bowl and an Olympic medal, joining former 49ers nose tackle Michael Carter, who won Silver in the Shot Put at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

But forget just medaling, go out and win the whole damn thing.

 LIKE A GREEK GOD. I missed sharing this in yesterday's Skull Session, but this needs to be addressed because this is damn near the most physically impressive upper body I've ever seen in my life.

Straight up, if you were to make an action figure based on that photo of Master Teague, I would probably think it looked unrealistically ripped.

 SONG OF THE DAY. "Hands in the Sky (Big Shot)" by Straylight Run.

 NOT STICKING TO SPORTS. A former made man opens up about life in the mafia... Why sunlight affects our mood... Psychedelic therapy could 'reset' a depressed brain... A man’s Zoom court hearing ends with handcuffs after he’s found attending from his victim’s home... A mother manipulated photos of her daughter's cheerleading rivals to make it appear they were drinking, smoking and even nude... A hacker got all my texts for $16... She escaped a crazed psychopath at 16. Decades later, as the BTK serial killer terrorizes Wichita, she has to run for her life again...

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