OHIO STATE FENCER NATALIA BOTELLO BECOMES WOMEN’S PROGRAM’S FOURTH INDIVIDUAL NATIONAL CHAMPION​

Natalia Botello is a national champion.

Botello captured the 2026 NCAA saber title on Friday at the NCAA Championships at Notre Dame, becoming just the fourth individual national champion in Ohio State women’s fencing history. She joins Yelena Kalkina (epee, 1997), Katarzyna Dabrowa (epee, 2012) and Eleanor Harvey (foil, 2016) in that distinction.

Click to expand...

Pretty clear is the Big 2, then the rest. I like it.

Ohio State’s Jesse Mendez, Ben Davino Will Wrestle for National Titles at 2026 NCAA Championships​

Two Buckeyes will wrestle for national championships on Saturday night.

Jesse Mendez will wrestle for his third straight national championship at 141 pounds. He’ll battle Oklahoma State’s Sergio Vega for the title after a dramatic victory in Friday night’s semifinals, where he took down Lehigh’s Luke Stanich for a 4-1 win in sudden victory.

Login to view embedded media
The No. 1 seed, Mendez looks to become the third wrestler in Ohio State history – joining Logan Stieber (a four-time champion) and Kyle Snyder – to win three NCAA championships. With a win on Saturday, Mendez would also complete an undefeated season; he’d become the fifth Buckeye to achieve that feat, joining Stieber (who did it twice), Snyder (who did it twice), Kollin Moore and Rex Holman.

Ben Davino, a redshirt freshman, looks to win his first national championship Saturday night when he will battle No. 1 seed Jax Forrest, also of Oklahoma State, for the 133-pound title. Davino, the No. 2 seed in the weight class, defeated No. 3 seed Marcus Blaze of Penn State – just as he did to win the Big Ten championship – in Friday’s semifinals.

Login to view embedded media
Collectively, Davino and Mendez look to become the first pair of Ohio State wrestlers to win national championships in the same season since Logan Stieber and Nathan Tomasello in 2015, when the Buckeyes also won their first and only team championship in program history. Penn State is a near-lock to win this year’s national championship, however, as the Nittany Lions held a decisive lead in the team standings as of Friday

Saturday night’s NCAA championship finals begin at 6:30 p.m. on ESPN.

In its 41st year celebrating the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade today
announced Anthony Thompson of Western Reserve Academy is the 2025-26 Gatorade Ohio Boys Basketball Player of
the Year.

Link

Login to view embedded media

AKAK said:

Sundown was a handsome fella. RIP to him too.

Click to expand...

They telegraphed it in the opening song: "look behind you because that's where the ranger's gonna be."

Jason Singleton leads Columbus Academy into the state finals with a game high 26 points. Will be facing Lutheran East in the state finals again.

Login to view embedded media

Paddy goes down 10-2. Great job to him to be an All-American!

Kharchla beats Mantanona 10-3 to move on!

Cannon moves on! Big win against Catrabone in a flurry 3rd period!

Login to view embedded media
Cheese just beat Ped State 4-3 in OT.

Login to view embedded media

Bah! I don’t feel sorry for Petey. He deserved to be banned. He knew the rules. He knew the consequences of breaking them. He still bet on baseball, including Reds’ games.

Then he lied about it. Repeatedly. For years. And to say he didn’t tarnish the game is hogwash.

After all the lies, he finally changed his stories and said his bets didn’t really matter because he never bet for the Reds to lose. Even if you’re naive enough to believe Petey never bet against the Reds, he still rigged games. As manager he chose who played when.

OHSportsFan said:

We’re moping and whining and crying (at least some but we get called out). I definitely want more out of our basketball program - from the top down.

The SEC seems to put out plenty of good teams while keeping football “king”. It’s a little circular- the department needs to invest in the product and the fans need to show up. I think Ohio is a good basketball state with fans that love the sport so I’d put it on the big wigs with money to take the risk and invest.

But I get his overall point. 17 die hard basketball fans and a couple pretend ones that show up with pitchforks to the AD isn’t going to move the needle.

Click to expand...

Agreed. The truth is we have some fans who are ignorant & outspoken, and those exist in every fanbase but ours is bigger than almost all of them so it gets magnified. OSU fans are fickle, they will show up if the program is a winner, if not, then good luck. Yeah, our basketball program needs to achieve more, but it's unrealistic to ignore the obvious financial handicap & priority of feeding the beast (football).

I don't think a lot of the heat that Diebler gets is fair because, while no one is perfect, I agree with Titus in that I don't think Jake's gotten top-tier support from the OSU administration with talent evaluation/roster management help & with NIL, & those to me are the biggest problems with the program.

I don't like people like T-Bone and Tyvis comparing OSU men's basketball to OSU women's basketball or women's hockey or any other non-revenue sport, because it's way off base when you realize there are men's basketball teams spending $20 MILLION on their rosters and OSU is clearly trying to compete with programs that are spending far more on talent. OSU was well behind the top spenders even in the B1G, and when that becomes a pattern, that obviously is going to impact your competitiveness within the conference long-term. When your team is funded by millions of dollars less than many of your competitors, that's a huge problem that has a real effect on team-building. I doubt any of the non-revenue sports have to compete with many (if not most) top programs that are spending a lot more on talent, but that's the task they are making Diebler take on.

You're like halfway to keeping up with the Joneses financially, but you expect your house to look just as nice - something's got to give & people need to recognize the coach is not going to be able to plug all the holes in the roof with his fingers. I don't care what level of competitiveness non-revenue sports have & what kind of standards they make you believe exist, they really have no bearing on OSU men's basketball. The problem is many OSU fans are under the impression that Diebler's getting competitive support when he's not & place the blame where it's easiest.

Vega vs Mendez
Forrest vs Davino

Two very fun matchups....Davino/Jax is going to be fast paced and a blast to watch.

Geog’s luck runs out. Great run for the young man after losing in the 1st round.

Great to see things turning for the better.

True freshman Landon Robideau from Oklahoma State beats Duke in the tiebreak. Got a nice reversal to build riding time, then did a nice job of circling back to center and controlling the shots of Duke. Exciting match.

Ohio State just got a bad seeding number, no #8s won.

#9 St. louis beat #8 Georgia
#9 Iowa beat #8 Clemson
#9 Utah State beat #8 Villanova

cincibuck said:

What happened that caused Dieble to go off on the ncaa and the game? The refs let them play rough or what?

Click to expand...

I hope he did. The officiating down the stretch was completely one sided. TCU was allowed to hack our ball handlers and shooters at will and then at the other end they were getting LeBron style just getting breathed on fouls called in their favor.

Another case of the classic officiating logic of the "more physical" team being able to do whatever "because they are just more physical".

GALLAGHER!!!! 5-2 in SV!!!!!

Did you give him the number of a good proctologist?

Kharchla with a late reversal to seal the win over the 2 seed from Cornell! 5-3!

What happened that caused Dieble to go off on the ncaa and the game? The refs let them play rough or what?

Buckeyes take game 1 11-0

Cannon with the MD over Swisher from Penn 17-3!