Buckeye hoopsters won’t die
Actually, not our women’s team. Our lady ballers and Big Ten champions burned out in the first round of the tournament. Our men’s team, however, just won’t kill their tourney chances just yet. Though I wrote these guys off in January as an NIT team after dropping decisions to Purdue, Sparty and Tennessee, the Buckeyes rallied in the final week of the season to, perhaps, solidify their chances as an at-large selection.
The most recent victory came in a 15-2 monster run on Senior Day against Michigan State. Sadly, because I don’t get BTN in Alabama1, a true understanding of what happened eludes me. A look at the box score reveals that defense, again, may have been the key to a Buckeye victory. The Spartans committed 17 turnovers, 8 of them Ohio State steals, thereby vanquishing the Spartans and sending seniors Twiggy, Butler and Hunter out with a victory. Befuddling Izzo in the regular season finale was also enough to get the coveted Izzo endorsement:
“Do I think Ohio State is deserving of being in the tournament? Hands down… The problem is our league gets so maligned by people — and for what reason I don’t know. But, yeah, I think Ohio State deserves to be in. They beat two ranked teams down the stretch and they played one of the tougher schedules early.”
Yet, I don’t feel that the Buckeyes are in just yet, even though they’re now 2-9 against the RPI top 50 as opposed to 0-9 as they began the week. The Bucks lack a quality road win (boasting road victories over Cleveland State, Penn State, Illinois and Northwestern probably don’t count), and have those stones of shame acquired from Iowa City, Minnysoda and Ann Arbor. The Bucks did beat Syracuse in New York City, but they will probably need to repeat their efforts in Chicago.
By virtue of bettering their lot against Purdue and Sparty, the basketball Buckeyes avoid having to play on Thursday, though the game would’ve been against Northwestern. Instead, they get the set 4-5 quarterfinal rematch against Sparty, the winner of whom (presumably) plays the Big Ten regular season champion on Saturday. Advancing to the semis, even if it means getting slapped down by the Badgers, should settle all doubts about the Bucks’ tournament resume. If the Bucks make it to the tournament, everything I’ve read of Lunardi suggests they’ll play in either Little Rock (South regional) or Birmingham (Midwest regional)2. If they do get to Birmingham, that’ll mean only a 2 hour drive separates me from cheering on the Buckeyes and making an ass of myself in the process.
For me, this means some kind of rally-cap type effort to will the Bucks to the Dance from my seat in the South. Othello Hunter has already taken some initiative here with his “O-hawk”, because desperate times call for desperate haircuts. Baseballers and hockey players have playoff beards, and, for me? Well, I have the Buckstache that I’ll whip out if need be. I’m not the scraggy facial hair type, but if it means supporting a proud Ohio tradition, I’m all for it. As a lot of you may know, Ohioans have a proud tradition of sporting egregiously bad mustaches, dating surely to the genesis of Ohio from the Old Northwest. Rather than let the Buckstache serve as a source of derision, I use it as a source of pride, to shout from the highest mountaintop “I am from Ohio; look at my mustache!”. If sporting a Buckstache means willing the Bucks to the Dance, and to Birmingham where I can try to watch them, then I’m all in, baby. I can’t imagine my mom would be too happy if she had to look at it, but she doesn’t. So she’ll never know.
Whatever effects me rocking a Buckstache at the moment has on the Buckeye men’s team will have to be demonstrated sometime later. If you don’t opt for the Buckstache, you can at least watch the quarterfinal matchup against Michigan State on Friday on ESPN. Go Bucks!
I can’t comment from work anymore! It sucks!
Wil, you’re not the only one who can’t comment from work. The michigan conspiracy has also attacked my work computer.
OHD: The Buckeyeblog Your Bosses Don’t Want You to Read.
Seriously, though, demand justice. I think my employer knows that if they took away the right for me to periodically check up on what’s happening in Buckeyeworld, that I would go all Jesus-like on their marketplace of tables and computers and what-not.
Intimidation is the name of the game. Demand justice.
To clarify: the difference here is that we’re bad people and that we would most certainly risk our respective jobs (and probably most of our liberties) to remind the locals where we are that the Buckeyes are our life. We think our employers don’t restrict our Buckeye privileges because they’re nice and have a great work enviornment, but because they know there’ll be an incident.
And there would be.