Buckeye Blogger Network
Galileo Galilei thinks it through
Welcome to Monday Musings, glad to see you. Grab your coffee and let’ proceed. Let’s tee this up with women’s golf.
Women’s Golf
The NCAA tournament Regionals were played May 9-11, and Coach Hessian’s Ohio State team traveled to Palo Alto to compete in the Western Region. They didn’t leave their heart in San Francisco, but they did end their season in Palo Alto. Unfortunately, the golf didn’t go as well as planned as the Buckeyes finished 15th in the 24 team field. The top eight (8) team from each region advanced to the next round.
It was another near miss (more below) for the Buckeyes who finished the event at +47 to par, while the cut-off score to advance was +37. It was a ‘near miss’ in the respect that over the course of the three-round tournament, if each of the five players could have shot one stroke lower per round, OSU would have advanced. If one more tee shot would have found the fairway, if one more putt would have dropped…
I thought this was a transition year for the Buckeyes, having lost three key players from last year’s team: Vicky Villanueva (graduation), Rachel Rohanna (left school for LPGA) and Big Ten Freshman of Year Kendall Prince (transfer). That’s a lot of talent to replace. Fortunately, the openings gave underclassmen Claudia Lim, Jan Chanpalangsri and Sheridan Balyeat ample playing time. As I expected, under Coaches Hession and Strom, the Buckeyes gradually improved their play as the season progressed. It was enjoyable to see their improvement.
I would like to start this week’s article with an apology as what follows is a bit rambling. Do to some events in my professional life this week, which actually sparked an idea for next week’s column, I did not have time to go back and edit/rewrite the article like I normally do. Hopefully people will still find it at least somewhat interesting and I promise that next week’s will be more on point.
As many of my readers probably know, prior to moving to Australia I was high school football and basketball official in the States. Officiating was a fun activity that allowed me to be involved in sports and helped me to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of sports, you get a very different perspective from watching the game on the playing surface. It also gave me a different perspective on officiating, showing me that it was a much harder job than I had ever anticipated and causing me to back-off considerably in my criticisms of officials and their calls during games. In fact, as many of you who follow me on twitter or who have joined us for our game chats here at The Buckeye Battlecry (if you haven’t joined us for game chats you really should as they are lots of fun), I have often taken to defending the officials, occasionally to the annoyance of others.
As an official I read with mild interest an opinion piece published on ESPN last week about teaching respect for officials. These type of pieces pop up from time to time and while I agree with the sentiment I have given up expecting the piece to actually do anything to change how sports fans view officials and a quick perusal of the comments section confirmed that view. The comments section was filled with the standard responses that one sees when you tell fans to respect the officials as people responded ‘I will respect the officials when they call the game right’ or ‘if I made a mistake at my job as big as what officials make, I would be fired’ or the ever famous ‘I will respect officials when they realize the game is not about them and that they should be invisible’. Of course I am paraphrasing on these but those statements encompass the spirit of most of the posts in the comment section and they are things that we have all heard and many of us have probably even said; I even said things like that before I became an official and I may have even made comments along the lines of ‘if I missed a call like that in a game I would never work anything higher than middle school ball again’ a time or two since becoming one.
Welcome to the family, Terrapins and Knights!
Ohio State will open the 2014 B1G season by traveling to College Park on October 4th for the n00bs first home conference game. Ohio State will then host Rutgers two weeks later as a part of the Conference Welcome Wagon.
Rutgers seems to have gotten the “Nebraska” treatment; wherein a new conference team has a bloodbath of a schedule. The Knights will play Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State (all East Division foes) as well as Wisconsin and Nebraska.
Maryland swaps one set of “Children of the Corn” for another, and will see Wisconsin and Iowa as a part of their cross-divisional experience.
The B1G 9 game schedule isn’t set to start until 2015, so OSU will still have four non-conference games this season. The full schedule is as follows.
You’ll note that Ohio State “misses” Wisconsin in 2014… Eric will just have to find another outlet for his loathing (or save it for basketball season). In fact, the Badgers don’t play Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, either… and you thought their 2013 basketball schedule was easy.
Sometimes I think of something. Then other times I think I thought of something before but can’t remember the details of what I was thinking. Then other times I think I think something, but I’m not really sure. One thing I know? It’s Wednesday, let’s rumble!
One of my favorite sports writers is Sports Illustrated legend Peter King. Some of you may only know him for his role on Football Night in America on Sunday nights during the NFL season. I’m here to tell you, Peter King’s “Monday Morning Quarterback” is a must read for me every week and, if you haven’t, something I think you may like as well. 
Let’s put it this way: Wednesday Night Rumble isn’t a rip-off of Monday Morning Quarterback, but it is very much influenced by it.
One of my favorite parts of King’s weekly column is his segment called “10 things I Think I Think”. Ten ideas that have popped into his head that span a variety of subjects, not just NFL related though he does stick to his core subject matter primarily. There ideas that he feels may work out, or maybe outside the box quips that try and make the reader think outside the box with him.
So, without any further ado, here is sort of version of “Things I Think I Think”.
It’s not summer yet, no matter how many days of 90+ degree weather that we have in Los Angeles… but the summer blockbuster season is upon us. With that in mind, let’s revisit an SBP favorite for this week’s soundtrack.
Buckeye 411
It’s Disney? Rats…
The beauty of it is, kids are kids and people are people, and if they first and foremost feel that you care about them and that you really are there to serve them, it’s easy. I’ve had the chance to hone those skills for many, many, many years, and to me it’s second nature to want to see what I can do for someone.
This also sounds familiar,
That marketing and television and all of the funds that are involved in major college athletics have certainly taken a little bit of control, not just for the institution, but I think it’s affected the experience for the youngsters. It’s not necessarily what I believe in, and I worry a little bit that there’s so much time invested into that singular passion, that — are we giving them the experiences that they are going to need through the rest of their lives?
Akron students… I hope you know how fortunate you are.
Buckeye Hoops
Welcome to another Monday Musings. I’m glad that you stopped in. Grab a coffee and have a seat. Frankly, I’m a bit light on sports this week, so we’ll start there.
Football
A big week for Orlando Pace, who was elected into the Collegiate Football Hall of Fame. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve seen a lot of quality offensive linemen play at Ohio State, but I think that Pace was one of the most dominant linemen I’ve seen. He obviously institutionalized the ‘pancake’ block, while possessing very good strength and extraordinary agility for a per his size. This was a very well deserved honor bestowed upon Mr. Pace.
Women’s Golf
The NCAA tournament is upon us with the Regionals being played May 9-11. Coach Hessian’s Ohio State team will be traveling to Palo Alto to compete in the Western Region. I’ll have recap in an upcoming Musing. Good luck Buckeyes.
All smiles
You know what would make a great Mother’s Day present? Flowers. Oh, and a new member of the Class of 2014.
Well, you’re on your own for all things floral, but today’s announcement from Gary Indiana playmaker Lonnie Johnson certainly helps make the day festive…
Johnson, a Buckeye lean for quite some time now, initially visited for The Game in November, and had been rumored to have been on the verge of a commitment for several months. His announcement today was moved up from the June 2 date that he said was his target earlier this week.
There was speculation that he was planning on making an official commitment on an official visit with his parents in January, but that visit never manifested leaving some to posit that there were some outstanding concerns on the part of the OSU staff. If true, his commitment today would indicate that those have been addressed.
Johnson is a member of the Core 6 training program that also includes Clifton Garret, Jamarco Jones, and Dylan Thompson as well as current OSU verbal Marcelys Jones.
A 6’2″ wide receiver, Johnson’s list of finalists included Purdue, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana, Cincinnati, and Nebraska, and said that OSU was a finalist with Mizzou and Kentucky.
After the jump, check out the speed that this young man brings to the Buckeyes: Read More
The past six months have seen lots of talk about conference realignment and as a result many teams will be finding new homes in the next couple years and some conference will be almost unrecognizable after the massive reorganization. The Big Ten will not see any change in its membership until 2014 but Big Ten fans won’t have to wait that long to see the effects of conference realignment. While everyone who is a college sports fan, at least beyond their own team, will likely see the impact of conference realignment beginning this fall, Big Ten fans will feel the direct impact of the realignment come December. This week the matchups for the annual Big Ten-ACC Challenge in men’s basketball were released and for those fans who missed out in all the realignment talk, the list of matchups will cause a large amount of confusion. In addition to announcing the matchups for the challenge, Yahoo sports has ranked the matchups in terms of interest and while I generally agree with much of Yahoo’s coverage, there are several issues that I have with their ranking of matchups.
My issues with Yahoo’s rankings begin almost immediately as they ranked Michigan-Duke as the most interesting matchup. Sure, to the casual fan who for some reason give Michigan basketball more historical credit than it deserves and ignores the whole NCAA ruling on the Fab Five, this may seem like an intriguing matchup of two teams with a rich history, it actually won’t be that good of a game. The Wolverines lose their star player as Trey Burke declared for the draft and in early December the team will still be looking to fill that hole, they will also be looking to find someone who can randomly put up ill-advised shots as Tim Hardaway Jr. is also leaving. Meanwhile Duke returns a very talented team and will be adding star freshman Jabari Parker to the mix. Add in the fact that Coach K is a far better coach and this one shouldn’t even be close.
