Welcome to the Skull Session.
2026 has belonged to The Styles Family.
Eddie George has added Lorenzo Styles Sr. to his Bowling Green staff as a senior analyst for the defensive line. https://t.co/NVH3RDJxWg
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) March 17, 2026
Congratulations to Lorenzo Sr. on his new gig!
Have a good Wednesday.
THE CIRCLE OF CHAMPIONS! Two former Ohio State All-American left tackles are set to be inducted into the OHSAA Circle of Champions on Saturday.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association announced Tuesday that Orlando Pace and Paris Johnson Jr. are among five Ohio standouts selected for the 2026 class. They will join former Ohio State women’s basketball star Frani Washington — the program’s first All-American — along with former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn and longtime official Dr. Dennis Morris.
Here’s what the OHSAA wrote about their selections of Pace, Johnson and Washington:
Orlando Pace
Pace was a basketball and football standout at Sandusky High School before beginning an accomplished football career as an offensive tackle at Ohio State, where he was a two-time unanimous All-American, a two-time winner of the Lombardi Award, won the Outland Trophy and finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting. He was named the 1996 Big Ten Player of the Year. The No. 1 pick in the 1997 NFL Draft, Pace played 13 years in the NFL with the Rams and Bears. He was a seven-time Pro Bowl and five-time all-Pro selection and helped the Rams win the Super Bowl after the 1999 season and make another appearance two years later. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016.
Paris Johnson Jr.
Johnson Jr. is a Cincinnati native who graduated from Princeton High School in 2019 and was twice named a first team all-Ohio offensive tackle. He attended Ohio State, where he started as a freshman in the National Championship Game against Alabama in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, and then started every game as a sophomore and junior and was named All-Big Ten and was a unanimous All-American as a left tackle as a junior. Selected sixth in the first round of the NFL draft by Arizona in 2023, Johnson has started 43 games with the Cardinals, the last two years at left tackle.
Frani Washington
Washington was a pioneer in girls sports in the 1970s. A three-sport star at Toledo Woodward High School, she was first team All-Ohio in basketball as a senior and was named the Toledo City League Player-of-the-Year. As a junior, Washington competed in the first OHSAA girls state track & field tournament and was on state championship and state runner-up relay teams, and she led the Polar Bears to the first-ever OHSAA big-school girls state basketball championship in 1976. Washington went on to play basketball at Ohio State and helped the Buckeyes win the Big Ten championship in 1978 and became the school’s first All-American in women’s basketball a year later. She resides in her hometown of Toledo.
You’re telling me the OSHAA is just now placing Pace and Washington in its Circle of Champions?!
That’s insane!
Nevertheless, the OHSAA will honor Pace, Johnson, Washington, Quinn and Morris at 4:15 p.m. on Saturday during the Division VII final at Dayton’s UD Arena.
THREAT LEVEL: LOW. Eleven Warriors contributor Johnny Ginter’s retired Threat Level: Michigan featured a tier titled “Low: Donovan Edwards Revolutionizing the Running Back Position” in 2024. If Threat Level returned in 2026, the tier would be “Low: Bryce Underwood Revolutionizing the Quarterback Position.”
Revolutionize is what new Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham wants to do to Underwood this offseason. I’m not convinced he will. Will he get better? Certainly. The Wolverines didn’t have a quarterbacks coach last season. But will Underwood evolve into some sort of World Beater? Naaaaaahhh.
“It was very obvious that Bryce is a mega-talent,” Whittingham told ESPN’s Heather Dinich this week. “He’s got so much ability, but he’s raw — as you would expect for an 18-year-old starting quarterback at a Power 4 school to be. He was not a completely finished product, and that’s our job now to turn him into that.”
While Underwood excelled with his legs last season — he ran for 392 yards and six scores — he struggled when teams made him… play quarterback. Underwood completed 60.3% of his passes for 2,428 yards, 11 touchdowns and nine interceptions in year one as Michigan’s passing offense ranked No. 127 nationally.
Whittingham said offensive coordinator Jason Beck and quarterbacks coach Koy Detmer Jr. will improve those numbers.
“It’s kind of a tag team approach with those two,” Whittingham said. “It’s just polishing up some things with Bryce, footwork things, some throwing motion nuances, and obviously teaching the scheme…”
You know, basic quarterback stuff.
“... Fortunately — and it’s one of the things that makes Jason such an outstanding coordinator, particularly in this day and age — he’s got a very user-friendly offense with not a steep learning curve…”
That will certainly work against Matt Patricia!
**blows raspberry**
On Underwood, Whittingham added, “He’s got the right mentality, the right work ethic. He’s willing, he’s hungry — as is the whole team. That was one of the things that was really positive when I got there — the willingness of this team and the hunger they had for structure and discipline and being pushed hard. We pushed it pretty hard this winter conditioning, and they answered the bell to everything we threw at them.”
But will they answer the bell on Nov. 28 in Columbus?
I don’t think so!
MOTHER OF PEARL. How do Eleven Warriors readers feel about Bruce Pearl? I’ll assume the answer is not kind to the 65-year-old. Though, as The Athletic’s Will Leitch will explain, it shouldn’t be.
Leitch penned a column this week targeted at Pearl, who Leitch — and many others, including me — believes ruined most of the NCAA Selection Show as he shilled for 17-16 Auburn to make the NCAA Tournament over 31-1 Miami (OH).
But let’s rewind a moment.
In February, Pearl told the best outlet in the business, Barstool Sports, that the RedHawks didn’t belong in the NCAA Tournament field because “they’re not built for the grind of a Big Ten or even a Big East.” He claimed Miami would finish near the bottom of the Big East, alongside Marquette and Chris Holtmann’s DePaul (which actually finished sixth in the conference; credit to Holtmann).
Later, Pearl told The Athletic that he believed Miami deserved a bid as a one-loss team, though he did not view the Redhawks as one of the 37 best teams up for an at-large bid.
Now, let’s return to Leitch’s article, which informed me — someone who knows Pearl from his time at Tennessee and Auburn more than his stints at Stanford (assistant), Iowa (assistant), Southern Indiana and Milwaukee — that Pearl has never been a stand-up coach or individual.
Who should be in the tournament [over Miami]? Could Pearl possibly interest you in Auburn? That’s the school he not only coached for a decade but also set up for his son to coach when he left. He is still getting paid by Auburn while offering his takes. The number of conflicts of interest for Pearl here bends toward the infinite. It would have been a disaster for the overall health of the sport if a 17-16 Auburn had gotten in over a one-loss (or zero losses, which is how many the RedHawks had when Pearl made his comments) Miami. But if we know anything about Pearl, we know that his concern is never an “overall” anything: His concern is always Bruce Pearl getting what Bruce Pearl wants. It is, in fact, his signature trait.
As someone who grew up an Illinois basketball fan in the 1990s, I’ve been trying to solve the Pearl riddle for most of my life, from all the way back when he was an assistant coach for Iowa, where, frustrated that he was unable to land prized recruit Deon Thomas (who is now 55 years old), he doctored allegations in such a venal, chaotic way that it ruined several people’s lives and careers for decades, including his own. (The definitive account of the Bruce Pearl-Deon Thomas fiasco was reported by Daniel Libit at Deadspin more than a decade ago; the scandal led to Pearl being cast out of the sport for nearly a decade before clawing his way back from Southern Indiana and Wisconsin-Milwaukee to Tennessee and ultimately Auburn.)
What I couldn’t understand about Pearl, for years, was how cheerfully shameless he was. No matter what happened to him, no matter what he was caught doing, Pearl always, always doubled down. He always assumed it would all work out for him.
...
Pearl knew that he didn’t need to hide his deeds from the world. He just needed the world to catch up with him — to realize that pretending there was some sort of society that held us all together was a chump’s game. Pearl broke every rule. But he was smart enough to realize the world was starting, it turned out, not to care about rules anymore. Nobody checks for speeding anymore. Nobody cares!
And it worked. It all worked. We spent two weeks having exhausting debates about Miami vs. Auburn, the RedHawks ended up (absurdly) being almost the last team in the tournament and, most importantly, we were all talking about Pearl. And there he was again, the main character on the studio show, the biggest moment in college basketball. How Pearl would react to Auburn not making the tournament became the primary storyline of the show, to the point that Clark Kellogg, Seth Davis and Adam Zucker referenced it throughout the broadcast, culminating in Pearl, in a moment that was indeed ripe with potential tension, at last breaking down the bubble that had just popped for his son’s (and his) team.
Pearl played the magnanimous card, defending the Tigers’ resume but laying off the RedHawks and playing the disappointed dad. He will remain at the center of the conversation and the sport. The man who was kicked out of his sport for lying to the NCAA, who was banished to the Division II wilderness for setting up an 18-year-old kid because he lost a recruiting battle, who was fired from one SEC job for breaking rules just to hop to another one when they decided all they cared about was winning, is now the face of the college basketball.
It has been quite the journey. For Pearl, and for all of us.
Leitch’s column title? On Selection Sunday’s biggest stage, Bruce Pearl loses and college basketball wins.
That’s cold.
Get this man off the same screen as Clark Kellogg and give me back Jay Wright!
A MUCH BETTER BRUCE. I don’t think we talked enough about Bruce Thornton’s reaction to Ohio State being selected as a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The video the Buckeyes’ X account posted on Sunday was so good.
GREENVILLE BOUND. Lets get it. #GoBucks | #FightToTheEnd pic.twitter.com/k1xXufrvZ7
— Ohio State Hoops (@OhioStateHoops) March 15, 2026
Also on Sunday, CBS Sports’ Mackenzie Brooks called Ohio State her “Cinderella” pick in the East Region.
“This is a team with a really high ceiling but a really low floor,” Brooks said. “They could be out of there in the Round of 32, but again, they do have a chance to make it to the Elite Eight, give the matchups they have.”
Those matchups include No. 9 seed TCU, No. 1 seed Duke and either No. 4 seed Kansas or No. 5 seed St. John’s.
“Duke is a really vulnerable team right now,” Brooks said. “It is not impossible to think that (Ohio State could beat Duke), and we have (the Buckeyes) favored against St. John’s, so take that for what you will.”
According to CBS Sports, Ohio State has an 11% chance to reach the Elite Eight this year. According to me, that 11% depends entirely on which version of Thornton shows up in Greenville, South Carolina, this weekend.
MASH MADNESS. You could watch Ohio State play TCU at High Bank Distillery during the Mash Madness: Barrel Room Bash.
For $35 per day or $60 for both days, you’ll get wall-to-wall basketball, an all-you-can-eat game-day feast and access to one of the best atmospheres in Columbus to sweat out every buzzer-beater. We’re turning the barrel room into the ultimate hangout — massive screens, nonstop action from the first tip to the final buzzer and the kind of electric energy that only March can bring.
Come hungry and stay all day. High Bank is serving up a full spread of nachos, wings, hot dogs, salads and more — the comfort food you need to power through overtime thrillers and bracket chaos (drinks sold separately). Sip your way through the madness with craft cocktails, whiskey pours, buckets of beer and more available at the bar, and don’t miss the limited-release Mash Madness Cigar Cask Blend while you’re there.
We’ll also have raffle items and prizes throughout the event benefiting the Mid-Ohio Food Collective, so you can enjoy the games while supporting a great cause in the community. Bring your crew. Rep your team. Cheer loud!
SONG OF THE DAY. "Mariner Boy" - Amble.
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