All-American End of Week Mierda
James Laurinaitis and Kirk Barton were named First Team All-America by the American Football Coaches Association. Brian Robiskie was named to the academic All-America team. Hard to argue with the selections though one could say Laurinaitis was relatively quiet the second half the season. His Washington game, however, was perhaps his finest as a Buckeye.
Miami coach Randy Shannon granted an 'exclusive' interview with the Miami Herald. The topics were wide ranging but when it came to player misconduct at Miami and off campus housing, Shannon somehow drug Ohio State into the conversation. We've apparently had all kinds of recent trouble with our players - like "bar fights" and such. The outburst was bizarre - and wrong - and now the Herald has edited the interview and removed the Ohio State references. Luckily a few good souls saved the passage before being scrubbed away in cyberspace. Here's the excerpt:
Q: Obviously, though, there are kids that live off campus. What do you tell parents about that?
A: We show them the neighborhoods. Everybody else in the country lives off campus and they still have the same problems. But their newspaper don’t beat them up about it. Like our newspaper beats us up about it. I know you guys are doing your job, you got to beat us up about it. But then understand we just want a fair shot. At Ohio State, do you realize you had more things happen at Ohio State more than anything. You think we’ve been bad? Go check out Ohio State, guys who have been arrested, bar fights. Look at everything at Ohio State and you’d think the University of Miami was angels. Florida, the same. There’s going to be two guys let back on that team because of a gun charges and one who unloaded it in a club. What would happen if I do that?
When you get past the awful grammar, one has to decide whether to give the benefit of the doubt to Shannon. Maybe he meant to single out Penn State.
Fat and outshape is no way to play football, at least according to current members of our football team. What has been widely speculated has now been confirmed - some (many?) players didn't take conditioning as serious as they should have last year leading to the BCS Championship game. The long layoff didn't help either but compounding that problem was a logistical error on Ohio State's part leaving too soon for the desert. Apparently provisions have been put in place for it to never happen again.
Who has permission to take the lid of the basket? In Ohio State's two losses this year on the hardwood, they've suffered mind-numbing droughts from the field. Against Texas A&M, a 6 point halftime deficit quickly grew to 30-ish because the Buckeyes missed 17 of their first 18 shots of the second half. An almost identical stretch happened Wednesday night against #2 North Carolina. Leading 35-31 early in the second half, Ohio State went more than 10 minutes without a field goal. During that span, they missed 17 straight. On the bright side, Jon Deibler broke out of his slump hitting five 3s including one at the hash. No, really. The hash. He's a streaky player and more of a scorer than a shooter. Eleven Warriors has some excellent commentary, too.
