Skull Session: Mark Titus Had Fair and Unfair Criticisms of Ohio State Basketball Fans, Jalen Rose Trolls Buckeye Hoops, and Jaloni Cambridge vs. Hannah Hidalgo Will Be Cinema

By Chase Brown on March 23, 2026 at 4:55 am
Jake Diebler
Bob Donnan-Imagn Images
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Welcome to the Skull Session.

Who has the best sports mixtape?

Ohio State football players have the answers:

Have a good Monday.

 BUILD THEM A NEW ARENA. Ohio State women’s hockey had another season end in heartbreak, as the Buckeyes lost the national championship game to Wisconsin for the second straight year and third time in four years on Sunday.

I hope the loss doesn’t prevent the Ohio State athletic department from breaking ground on a new arena for both the men’s and women’s programs — the latter, especially.

The OSU Ice Rink is a subpar venue for a team of the Buckeyes’ caliber. They’ve made five straight national title games and six straight Frozen Fours. It’s unacceptable that they practice and play on the same surface I watched my college buddies play intramural games on late weekday nights.

At this point, there’s nothing left to evaluate, nothing left to “study,” and nothing left to discuss. This program has already proven its one of the best in the country. Ohio State doesn’t need more talk about supporting women’s sports. It needs to actually do it. 

Build the arena.

 EARNED, NEVER GIVEN. Mark Titus called Ohio State basketball fans “the worst fans in the world” last week. 

Is he right? 

Is he wrong? 

The tension between those two truths is exactly why his rant hit such a nerve.

What Titus gets right starts with reality: Ohio State is a football school, and it always will be. Basketball, even at its best, operates as a secondary passion for a large portion of the fanbase. You see it in attendance dips when the team struggles. You see it in the way discourse spikes only when the stakes are highest — March, or late February if things are going sideways. And you definitely see it after losses like the one to TCU, when frustration boils over from fans who haven’t lived the day-to-day of the season.

There is a segment of the fanbase that parachutes in. They don’t follow rotations in December. They don’t know lineup quirks in January. But when March arrives, they expect a finished product — and when it isn’t, the reaction is swift and often uninformed. Titus is right to call that out. It’s not unique to Ohio State, but it is more pronounced here because of football’s gravitational pull.

He’s also right about expectations being misaligned with investment. Programs like Duke, Kansas, North Carolina and UConn don’t just win because of history — they sustain excellence because everything around the program is aligned: fan engagement, NIL support, recruiting buzz, home-court energy. Ohio State has flashes of that, but not the same relentless, year-round ecosystem. You can’t demand blue-blood results while operating like a program that occasionally checks in.

And Titus makes a fair point about the immediate “fire the coach” reaction. Jake Diebler deserves criticism — every coach does — but boiling a season, or even a single possession, down to incompetence misses the bigger picture. That kind of reaction often says more about emotional investment in a moment than informed evaluation over time.

But Titus also overreaches, and that’s where his argument loses some credibility.

Calling Ohio State basketball fans “the worst in the world” isn’t just hyperbolic — it ignores the nuance within the fanbase. There is a core group of fans who do follow the program year-round. They know the roster. They track recruiting. They show up, even when the product isn’t elite. To lump them in with casual observers is unfair and, frankly, lazy.

It also ignores structural realities that fans don’t control. Investment isn’t just about passion — it’s about infrastructure. NIL collectives, athletic department priorities and institutional commitment all shape a program’s ceiling just as much as fan enthusiasm. Blaming fans for a perceived lack of money in the basketball program oversimplifies a much more complex issue.

There’s also an important distinction between passion and blind loyalty. Ohio State fans are used to excellence. Football has conditioned them to expect it. So when basketball falls short, especially after years of inconsistency, it’s not surprising that frustration turns sharp. That doesn’t mean fans don’t care; in many cases, it means they care a lot. They just don’t always express it constructively.

And Titus glosses over another key factor: sustained success builds sustained engagement. Ohio State basketball hasn’t been to a Final Four since 2012. It hasn’t consistently competed at the highest level in the 14 years since. Expecting fans to treat the program like a perennial powerhouse when it hasn’t performed like one is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Investment follows belief, and belief is built through winning.

In reality, both sides are feeding into each other. Fans check out because the program isn’t consistently elite. The program struggles to reach that level because it lacks the full-throttle support of a blue-blood ecosystem. Titus is right that something has to change — but it’s not as simple as fans “caring more.”

The truth is, Ohio State basketball lives in a complicated space. It has the resources, brand, and potential to be a top-10 program. But it also shares oxygen with one of the most dominant football cultures in sports. That tension creates uneven engagement, inflated expectations, and moments like the one Titus reacted to.

So yes, Titus is right that parts of the fanbase show up late and react loudly. He’s right that expectations often outpace investment. But he’s wrong to paint the entire fanbase with that brush, and wrong to suggest the solution rests solely with them.

If Ohio State basketball wants the kind of support Titus is talking about, it has to meet fans halfway. Win consistently. Build momentum. Give people a reason to stay locked in from November through March. Because at Ohio State, attention isn’t given. It’s earned.

 BOO THIS MAN! BOO! I don’t need to give you more reasons to hate Jalen Rose. Alas, here’s another: After Ohio State lost to TCU on Thursday, the former Michigan forward trolled the Buckeyes on the CBS studio broadcast.

Clark Kellogg has more class in his pinkie finger than Rose has in his entire body.

Boo this man! Boo!

 NO LUCK FOR THE IRISH. Two words: Jaloni Cambridge and Hannah Hidalgo, must-see TV.

Ohio State women’s basketball will host Notre Dame in the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 32 on Monday at the Schottenstein Center, and I’m especially looking forward to the stellar guard matchup between Cambridge and Hidalgo.

Hidalgo stuffs the stat sheet at a ridiculous level, averaging 25.2 points, 6.5 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 5.5 steals per game — yes, 5.5 — while Cambridge paces Ohio State with 22.8 points, 4.6 assists and 1.9 steals per contest. Cambridge has a slight edge in efficiency, shooting 49% from the field compared to Hidalgo’s 48.1%.

Both Hidalgo and Cambridge impact the game as high-usage, do-it-all guards. Both are at their best with the ball in their hands, creating offense for themselves and others while applying constant pressure defensively, which should help Ohio State feel comfortable in the matchup against a familiar style of play. 

And it’s not just Jaloni who can take on that challenge, as her sister, Kennedy, gives the Buckeyes another reliable option on Hidalgo. A national defensive player of the year semifinalist, Kennedy set Ohio State’s single-season steals record this year and has the tools to make life difficult on one of the country’s most dynamic scorers.

If Ohio State can lean on the Cambridge sisters, Chance Gray’s 3-point shooting (40.9% on the season) and Elsa Lemmila’s rebounding (9.9 per game over the last 10), the Buckeyes have a strong chance to reach their first Sweet 16 in three years.

 SONG OF THE DAY. "Send Me On My Way" - Rusted Root.

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