Our Honor Defend

It’s still the middle of the work week for a lot of us. We’re not out of the clear yet, but we’re fortunately over the hump. This post will recap some of what has been going on while we were all busy working and doing other things.

Roderick Smith Did Not Enroll For Summer Quarter

Monday was a big news day for Buckeye fans, and not a lot of it was good.  It started in the aftermath of Jamel Turner’s shooting, where we learned that Turner will fortunately survive this horrific incident.  However, most are assuming his playing days are over.  The family is asking for privacy and more details — outside of identifying and naming a person of interest in the shooting — are not forthcoming.  It then moved to the news on Duron Carter’s transfer and Keith Wells’ departure.  Duron and his father Cris swear allegiance to the program and that the goal is to re-enroll at Ohio State in the near future.

It was followed by news that Roderick Smith has not enrolled at Ohio State.  No official word given, but it is pretty clear to all that grades are the culprit.  He was long rumored to be on the fence about exactly this.  The good news is that you’re not hearing serious rumors about him having to spend a semester or a year in a prep school  It does not appear to be a test score issue.  Instead, it’s likely a GPA that is just below the minimum required by the university. In other words, this may be more like what happened to Nathan Williams, less like what happened to Carlos Hyde.

The good news is that Smith was the only one, meaning that Tyrone Williams made it in.  He was the other recruit in the 2010 class on the fence.

Evan Turner Will Be Making Some Money Shortly

I don’t know where exactly Evan Turner sits among the pantheon of Buckeye shooty hoops greats like Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek and so on, but the three years he gave us, culminating in a multiple accolade-winning junior season, will surely make his name a regular one in any such conversation.  His name is coming up in conversation these days.  First, he won the Big Ten Male Athlete of the Year Award (aka: Jesse Owens Award).

Turner becomes the first Ohio State basketball player to earn the Jesse Owens Male Athlete of the Year Award and the third Buckeye in any sport to take home the trophy.  A junior guard from Chicago, Turner racked up a slew of national accolades, winning the Wooden Award, Naismith and Oscar Robertson trophies as well as being named National Player of the Year by the Associated Press, Basketball Times, National Association of Basketball Coaches and Sporting News. The conference’s consensus Player of the Year, Turner was the Most Outstanding Player of the Big Ten Tournament and was named to a litany of All-America teams. He set a Big Ten record with 10 career Player of the Week selections, including seven in 2009-10. In his junior campaign, Turner led the Big Ten with 20.4 points and 9.2 rebounds per game, ranking second with 6.0 assists per contest. With the performance, he became the only player in Ohio State history to tally over 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, 400 assists and 150 steals in a career. He recorded 16 double-doubles in 2009-10, including five consecutive to open the season, giving him 27 in his career. He also became one of just 34 players in NCAA Division I history to record multiple triple-doubles in a season, accomplishing the feat on Nov. 9 and Nov. 24, 2009.

Evan Turner will follow that up with likely being selected by the Philadelphia 76ers.  The NBA isn’t my thing  (growing up in LA will do that to you), but I’m happy for any person who literally broke his back for the Buckeyes, only to wind up getting a multi-million dollar contract playing the sport he loves.

Seriously, World Cup

The ongoing poll on my dumb little blog suggests there is an important contingent of readership who simply could not be bothered with the ongoing World Cup.  Of course, this is my dumb blog and, therefore, my dumb rules.  World Cup 1994 was a huge deal in LA when I was growing up, as many of the games were held in the Rose Bowl.  I also remember staying up until 4 in the morning pacific coast time in the summer of 2002, enjoying the US crushing Mexico’s hopes and dreams in the quarters in South Korea.  It was very hard to watch that game and not celebrate so loud as to wake my parents and sister.  Long story short, this event is fascinating, the games can be enthralling and I’ve made it a point to watch every one (on TV or ESPN3.com) outside of the second halves of games that coincide with my 10am meetings.  Coincidentally, the US-Algeria game happened to be one of those.

It’s easy to hate the game because so many play it wrong.  Indeed, I admit it’s difficult to watch the Italian national team and not hope the country tilts over and sinks into the Adriatic.  The Americans are a fun team to get behind, as Brian Cook elaborates.

We don’t roll around on the ground. If we fall over, we probably just fell over. We run and and run and run, and late, when everything is stacked against us in a game where it’s just so hard to finish the job, we do it Puritan style: ugly effort.

The Yanks are clearly not the best team in the tournament, just the most honest and hardest working. As Brian notes, the Yanks are essentially the college kids that beat the Soviets in the 1980 Winter Olympics, except spread over twenty years.  It’s also a common cause on the Twitter feed.  Gator fans, Nittany Lions fans, Buckeye fans and Michigan fans all rooting for one cause?  There may be hope for us yet.

So yes, I’m going to make you watch this.  This was about as American as making a Statue of Liberty out of apple pie and baseballs.

Here it is on Univision.  Because everything is better on Univision.

The goal, which gives the US its best World Cup group showing since the first one in 1930 (Hoover Administration, yo), was also significant on another note: it damn near broke the internet.  It certainly broke Twitter for a good half hour or so.

Big 33

The Big 33 game is played between Ohio and Pennsylvania prepsters in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  The Ohio side again emerged victorious in this game.  Better yet, Verlon Reed replicated his MVP effort in the Ohio North-South Classic by earning MVP honors here as well.  He joined Darryl Baldwin, JT Moore and Christian Bryant as future Buckeyes playing in this game.  The O-Zone has a write-up containing comments on their individual efforts.  The reviews of Verlon Reed were naturally positive; he was the MVP after all.  Here are some comments that Tony Gerdeman had for the others.

After seeing Baldwin in the Ohio North/South Game, I wasn’t overly impressed. Yes, the frame is there, but the ability seemed to be lacking. In the Big 33 game, however, he showed himself to be unblockable at times. Although according to him, it wasn’t anything too overwhelming.

Not surprisingly, the reviews for Baldwin corroborate previous observations about him.  There is a lot to work with, but a lot that needs work.  As I said in my BKAB feature on him, he probably stands the most to benefit from a redshirt than anyone else in the 2010 class.

Meanwhile, JT Moore got generally positive reviews.  He’s come a long way since his junior year, when he committed to Ohio State.

Moore may not display the overall speed that you might be accustomed to for an Ohio State edge rusher, but he shows tremendous speed down the line and is a quick study of what the offense is doing. He’s pretty good in run support because he keeps moving towards the ball and refuses to be blocked at this level. He also recovered a blocked kick in the middle of a scrum, which tells you how comfortable he is amid the masses.

Gerdeman also pegged Christian Bryant as the best athlete of the game, also mentioning one play where he was burned.

Bryant was probably the best player on the field Saturday night. He was only challenged once on defense in the first half, which came on a deep throw late in the second quarter, and he stayed with his man step for step as the ball fell incomplete. Most of the night, the quarterbacks never even looked his way.