Hey Folks,

I'm a big Buckeye fan in the UK. We get CFB games on Pay TV over here throughout the season so get to see quite a few of the games live. It depends though on which games the broadcaster here chooses each weekend but we get the highlight and discussion shows too so get to see everything going on.

I've always loved watching the Rose Bowl so, last month, as the Buckeyes were in it, I treated myself to a trip to LA (took my good lady wife for company) to take in the game. It was a fantastic experience, much different to sports over here and we both had a great time. Got to high five some of the players going off of the field and saw coach Meyer coming out in his golf buggy! We were both freezing though waiting for the transit buses - thought SoCal was supposed to be nice and warm....(-:

That trip was a kind of last minute thing but we had always planned to come over later this year to take in a game at the Shoe. We've now confirmed this as the Badger game on October 26th. I'm hoping some of you can help me with the best options for getting tickets.

For the Rose Bowl I got them on Stubhub but obviously paid well over the ticket price (more than $1200 for 2 $215 tickets) and that would be my last resort if I have to do it again. It works out really expensive though.

So, just wanted to ask you guys if you know of any other options for getting tickets, ideally in the noisy sections if we can!

Thanks a lot
Riley

Go Bucks!!

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Wide Receiver / Defensive Back
Upper Marlboro MD Dr. Henry Wise

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Cincinnati OH Elder

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Committed to Ohio State today!

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Cornerback
Baltimore (MD) St. Frances Academy

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So, the Chinese were able to successfully launch a landing vehicle, navigate it to the far side of the moon, and land it there. Then they forget to attach a heater to the biological experiment cannister, so the seeds of cotton, potato, rapeseed and Arabidopsis plants, as well as fruit-fly eggs and yeast, all died when night fell. Because, you know, it gets pretty fucking cold at night on the moon.

How in the fuck can a group of scientists smart enough to successfully land a vehicle on the far side of the moon overlook the simple facts that organisms will need to be protected from -60 degree temperatures.

Help Scott get to 1000 Youtube Subscribers, only a little over 100 more to go. I know for sure some of you have not subscribed yet. Scott is an inspirational speaker known across the country yet he is a real hometown (Hilliard and OSU Buckeye) national hero for being a great competitor in his running career and being a fine human being who can lift up folks of any persuasion.
Don't wait, do it now, and Never Quit!
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Hope springs eternal.

Freddie Kitchens: 5 challenges facing him as head coach of the Cleveland Browns

HC: Freddie Kitchens
Special Asst to the HC: Jody Wright

OC: Todd Monken
QB: Ryan Lindley
RB: Stump Mitchell
WR: Adam Henry
OL/Associate HC: James Campen
TE: Vacant
OQC: Jim Dray
OQC: Tyler Tettleton

DC: Steve Wilks
DL: Tosh Lupoi
LB: Al Holcomb
DB: Vacant

ST: Mike Priefer
Asst ST: Vacant

It looked like DeWayne Walker was staying on to coach the DBs but that may not be the case now with Wilks probably getting to pick his guy. Chris Jones of the Saskatchewan Roughriders is reportedly accepting a defensive position with the Browns but it isn't clear what that role is yet. Joe Philbin reportedly interviewed and there was speculation it was for the open TE coach job.

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Sugar Hill GA Lanier

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Las Vegas (NV) Desert Pines

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Composite #1 TE in the country for 2020.

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BN $ - Ohio State 5-star offer too late? That is anything but the case

Offered a week ago, his coach says OSU will definitely make his top 10 and they plan to visit either in February or the summer.

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Ohio State Offers 2021 Lineman Ryan Linthicum

Ohio State to host standout linemen next weekend

I guess this is the thread I should say I am remorseful and will not do (whatever it is that got me banned) stuff to get banned anymore, well, none of the previous bans, nor this one have been fair. There a couple of people on here that can't handle a challenge to their thought process and are on their little power trip so rather than, debate, they hit the ban button.
I will contribute, to the board, in my on way, just like everyone else, and if that is not adequate, the little ban Nazis can hit the ban button again.

An Ohio State antenna is helping us see one of the oldest objects in our solar system: BTN LiveBIG
BTN.com LiveBIG Staff via Big Ten Network

From Ultima Thule to Earth, Buckeye tech is helping us explore the outer edges of our galactic neighborhood.

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Brady, Brees highlight 35 former B1G stars on AFC, NFC title game rosters
Brent Yarina, BTN.com Senior Editor via Big Ten Network

Thirty-five former Big Ten stars, not including Maryland, Nebraska or Rutgers players who were in school before entering the conference, are on AFC and NFC Championship Game rosters. See the full list inside.

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Scottsdale AZ Pinnacle

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GPA: 4.35 (NHS)

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Height: 6-foot-3
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Brother signed with Purdue. Mattison was his lead recruiter.

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Big Ten Power Rankings: Surging Terrapins move up to No. 3
Brent Yarina, BTN.com Senior Editor via Big Ten Network

Outside of undefeated Michigan and Michigan State, no team's playing better than Maryland. The Terrapins, behind Big Ten player of the week Bruno Fernando, are on a roll, winners of five in a row.

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Last year there seemed to be consensus that the OL and LB would be our weakest groups. What about this year?

QB - Nobody saw Haskins coming last year - not like he did. But we still saw it as a strong group. This year I am assuming Fields will be eligible and Martell will be gone. I believe we are still incredibly strong. Fields will not put up the passing numbers but our running game will return in full force. And with Baldwin I feel good about our bench.

RB - Fields is a key here. I look for Dobbins to have a monster season and with so many options for the second and third player we will be fine.

WR - We lost a bunch. But Mack will be back. Victor is coming on. Olave!!!! And Fields for a 5th season. Plus the #1 receiver recruit in the nation. Just fine.

TE - Berry, Farrel and Hausmann have all been solid contributors and are all upper classman. But I look for this to be the season of Jeremy Ruckert. Absolute strength.

OL - Once again the OL is an area of concern. But only because of the depth. Davis and Meyer - both 5 star recruits now in their 3rd season - are ready. Alabi and Bowen have starts under their belt and Munford rounds out the group. Plus the #1 OT recruit from 2017 has a season under his belt along with 2 other highly rated RS Frosh. Experience and depth make this a concern - but if everyone comes through and stays healthy it could be a strength.

DL - I don't care who we have lost, just too many talented players and too much depth and experience to call this anything but a strength. And of course - Larry Johnson.

LB - This group started to come on late and every one of them is back. But most importantly the LB coach isn't. There are some very talented players here who have not shown up yet and have the potential to make this the heart of the D.

DB - This unit IMO proved to be the actual weakest on the team in 2018 and I had grave concerns for this season until new names emerged the last few weeks. And now Fuller is returning which I frankly didn't expect. Once again with new coaching I see the return of the silver bullets.

Coaching - Hard to predict how all these new names will work together but I have to believe it will be better than 2018 where I believe much of our problems on D related to the dynamics between Grinch and Schiano. So I will fall back on the time worn adage - trust the coaches.

Frankly - I don't see a weak unit at all. Fields not being granted eligibility would change everything (I like Baldwin but not Baldwin with no backup). My major concern is depth on the OL - so that unit gets my vote.

I am bullish on the 2019 Buckeyes.

Ohio State to host standout linemen next weekend
Charles Doss via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here


The Buckeyes will have at least two highly sought after linemen in Columbus soon.

While spending time with family and friends over the weekend did you miss out on some of the latest news from the world of Ohio State football recruiting?

Don’t fret. Land-Grant Holy Land is here to save the day.

2019 OL changes OSU visit plans


Formally scheduled to make the trek from Indiana to Columbus to officially visit with newly hired head coach Ryan Day and the rest of the Ohio State Buckeyes football coaching staff this weekend, one of the top remaining offensive lineman in the class of 2019 had to switch his plans around.

Due to the winter weather that hit the Central Ohio area, three-star tackle Dawand Jones of Ben Davis High in Indianapolis will now head to the OSU campus this upcoming weekend to mingle with Day and company.

The athletic, 6-foot-8, 360-pound Jones locked in his scholarship offer from Ohio State in November. Picking up around 20 full rides so far during the process, Auburn and USC are just a couple of the programs the Buckeyes find themself up against in the hunt for the underrated Jones.

Will Jones join fellow 2019 offensive linemen Harry Miller (signed), Ryan Jacoby (signed), and Doug Nester (verbal) in the Buckeyes’ class? Stick with Land-Grant Holy Land for the latest.

Buckeyes to host 2021 standout


Jones won’t be the only highly rated offensive lineman taking time out of his busy schedule to visit the Ohio State University campus this upcoming weekend.

Also planning to head to Columbus is Damascus (MD) class of 2021 center Ryan Linthicum.


One of the first lineman from the class of 2021 to receive an opportunity to suit up in the historic Scarlet and Gray, Linthicum, a high school teammate of 2020 OSU defensive end target Bryan Bresee, has more than just the Buckeyes trying to bring him into the fold.

Picking up interest almost daily, Maryland, Michigan, Pittsburgh, and Virginia have also handed the 6-foot-4, 275-pounder a chance to continue his education and athletic career at their program.

Quick Hits

• According to Jake Weingarten, Ohio State checked out five-star class of 2021 shooting guard Terrence Clarke, among other prospects. Clarke, a Brewster Academy product holds offers from a long list of college programs including UConn, Georgetown, and Indiana.
• Rockwall (TX) four-star class of 2020 wide receiver and OSU verbal commit Jaxon Smith-Njigba was offered by Texas A&M on Saturday.

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Ohio State is at a crossroads, and may need a philosophical change to save their season
Patrick Mayhorn via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here


With the season hanging the balance, Ohio State has to adapt their approach.

For the first time in the Chris Holtmann era at Ohio State, the Buckeyes are under-performing, failing to adjust their strategy, and on a losing streak longer than two games. After dropping a top 25 battle to Michigan State last Saturday, and back to back road games to Rutgers and Iowa, the Buckeyes are feeling the January cold, and look completely lost with a number of massive games ahead of them.

The shooting has gone ice cold since the turn of the the calendar into 2019, with the Buckeyes shooting 43 percent (28 percent from three) against Michigan State, 39 percent against Rutgers (30 percent from three) and now 37 percent (40 percent from three) against Iowa. A lot of that comes from the fact that Ohio State’s primary guards (CJ Jackson, Duane Washington, Keyshawn Woods and Luther Muhammad) have all struggled greatly from the outside for the better part of the season to this point.

With no real outside threat, opponents are going almost exclusively with a 2-3 zone against the Buckeyes, and unless Kaleb Wesson is able to contribute 25 points a game (he isn’t), the Buckeyes have no real scoring answer for it. None of the guards have the quickness to get to the hoop against the zone, and outside of those four and the Wesson brothers, no one on the team is anywhere near being a consistent scoring threat.

That brings us to the second issue dogging the Buckeyes: their closest player resembling a star, Kaleb Wesson, can’t stay on the floor. In back to back games, Wesson has picked up two fouls within the first three minutes of play, keeping him sidelined for most of the first half. He fouled out against Michigan State (though he finished with 25 points), finished with four fouls and played just 26 minutes against Rutgers, and scored just once in 23 minutes against Iowa. He’s unable to play aggressively without fouling, and with him either hampered by fouls or off the floor entirely, Ohio State has little to no competence against the zone.

That brings me to the third, and most pressing problem: Ohio State can’t pass the ball because they have a core misunderstanding of how to deal with a zone. After not turning over the ball once in the first half against Michigan State, the Buckeyes have lost the ball 38 times in the last five halves, including a season high 21 times against Iowa.

Be it errant passes, like Andre Wesson’s late game blunder against Rutgers, ill-advised tosses directly into a zone, or over-dribbling, Ohio State is playing as loose with the ball as they ever have under Holtmann. They may be able to withstand that if more than one player on the team had any semblance of offensive consistency, but there’s no such luck. This is the hand Chris Holtmann was dealt, and while the elite talent isn’t there, we’ve seen him work magic before to know this isn’t the best product Ohio State could be putting out on the floor this year.

So how does Chris Holtmann adjust to the zone, clean up his young team’s mistakes, and get Ohio State headed back in the right direction before the season is lost? Well, a good first step may be to lean into Ohio State’s lack of size. We’ve seen variations of a small ball lineup work for the Buckeyes at several points this season, and some combination of three guards, one wing, and either Kaleb Wesson or Kyle Young may help speed up the excessively slow Buckeye offense.

Just changing the lineup, as we’ve seen, isn’t going to fix problems though. On top of a dedicated small ball group, Ohio State needs to consider adding press defense to their repertoire. With four quick, capable defender options at guard, and solid athletes in Musa Jallow, Andre Wesson and Jaedon LeDee, Ohio State has the speed and depth to force opponents to beat a press for most, if not all of a game.

The Buckeyes are struggling to defend without fouling and struggling to score. If they stop focusing so much on half-court offense and defense and just look to create turnovers and run in transition, they can both neutralize the zone defense and keep their own bigs from constant post defense. It’s a radical change from Chris Holtmann’s usual system, but his usual system isn’t working for this group of players right now, especially when the rest of the Big Ten is hyper-aware of Ohio State’s shooting deficiencies.

The shooting isn’t going to get fixed, at least not enough to turn the season around. Kaleb Wesson isn’t suddenly going to learn how to defend without fouling. The young Buckeyes aren’t going to suddenly realize that you can’t throw long passes against a zone. If the Buckeyes can’t win the situations they’re being put in by opposing teams and by their own limitations, they need to change the game. They need to flip the board and create chaos rather than trying to turn an undisciplined team without an elite scoring threat into the veteran Buckeyes led by Keita Bates-Diop that we saw in 2018.

This is a rebuilding year, sure. We knew that coming in, and the early season success may have skewed the fact that this is still a mostly young, mostly not-quite-ready roster full of guys that are going to be good at some point. But that doesn’t mean the Buckeyes have to lay down and die at the hand of a 2-3 zone. Ohio State has some talent, it has plenty of athleticism and it has energy. Chris Holtmann needs to play into those strengths before the season spirals out of control.

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Ohio State drops third straight, loses to Iowa 72-62
Gene Ross via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here


For the first time under Chris Holtmann, the Buckeyes have lost three games in a row.

For the first time in the Chris Holtmann era, Ohio State (12-4, 2-3) has lost three games in a row, falling 72-62 to Iowa (14-3, 3-3). After dropping their last two contests to Michigan State and Rutgers, the Buckeyes continued to struggle and were unable to stop the skid in Iowa City, a place that has not been kind to OSU athletics in recent years.

Turnovers and foul trouble were the biggest issue for Ohio State this time around, as they turned the ball over a whopping 21 times and had 23 fouls as a team. The shooting was particularly poor as well, as they shot just 37 percent in a game where nothing seemed to go right for the guys in Scarlet.

The Buckeyes leading scorer this season Kaleb Wesson, averaging around 17 points per game, scored just two points in the contest as a result of early foul trouble. Ohio State was led on the scoreboard instead by his brother Andre Wesson, who put up 13 points.

Iowa was led by Luka Garza, who scored 16 points on 6-of-7 shooting. As a team, the Hawkeyes shot 45 percent from the floor and scored 18 of their points at the free throw line. As with almost all of Ohio State’s losses this season, they utilized an effective zone defense to neutralize the Buckeyes on the offensive end.

OSU is now just 2-3 in the Big Ten and has looked particularly bad during this three-game skid. The team has not found ways to score without Kaleb Wesson on the floor and their guard play has not been good. They will have a few extra days to try to figure things out before they return home to take on Maryland on Friday night.


Ohio State won the opening tip to get things underway in Iowa City. Keyshawn Woods got a contested basket to go on the interior as the Buckeyes were on the board first. After the two teams traded empty possessions, it was Luka Garza getting a layup to go for Iowa as the two teams were locked at two apiece three minutes into the game.

Kaleb Wesson again found himself with two quick fouls as he was forced to go to the bench. The Hawkeyes immediately took advantage, drawing a foul inside and getting a point at the line from Tyler Cook. Luther Muhammad drilled a three-pointer, but Joe Wieskamp got a put-back layup at the other end to tie the game up at five. Jordan Bohannon knocked down a three in transition as Iowa took an 8-5 lead.

Jaedon LeDee got on the board with a short jumper to cut the Hawkeye lead to one, but Iowa got it back up to four on an and-one play from Cook. Kyle Young made a nice jump stop move inside for an easy two as both teams started to get sloppy with the ball. At the 12:45 mark, the two teams already combined for 10 turnovers. Musa Jallow would be able to knock down a three, and OSU led 12-11 with 12:22 to go in the period.

Ryan Kriener got the Hawkeyes back on top with a putback layup before another three-ball from Jallow had Ohio State up two. LeDee extended the Buckeye lead to 17-13 with an and-one play off of an offensive rebound heading into the second media timeout.

Kriener got another basket to go inside on a jump hook, and after the two teams traded empty possessions it was Kriener again with a step-back three to give the Hawkeyes back the lead. After two missed free throws from Cook, Kaleb Wesson got involved in the scoring with a layup as Ohio State took a one-point lead with 6:11 remaining until halftime.

Muhammad knocked down a nice mid-range jumper, but Wieskamp got an easy transition bucket after yet another Buckeye turnover. After a bunch of empty possessions on both sides, we headed into the final media timeout of the first period with Ohio State holding a 21-20 lead.

Iowa regained the lead on a baseline jumper from Nicholas Baer, but Muhammad got it right back with a pair of free throws. The Hawkeyes answered with a layup from Cook, but OSU got a three-ball from Justin Ahrens to take a 26-24 lead. Neither team would score on the last few possessions of the period as Ohio State took their two-point lead into halftime.

The first period was not pretty for either team, as both shot under 40 percent from the field. The Buckeyes turned the ball over 11 times, but this was negated by Iowa’s nine turnovers. Muhammad and Kriener tied at seven points apiece to lead all scorers. The first 20 minutes saw 12 lead changes as neither team could really get anything going. Kaleb Wesson played just eight minutes in the half as a result of foul trouble.

Ohio State got on the board first in the second half as Young worked inside for the layup, but Cook answered with a contested layup on the other end on the ensuing possession. After an Isaiah Moss jumper, the two teams traded buckets back and forth as things were tied at 30 apiece with 17:23 to go.

Iowa regained the lead on a second-chance basket from Garza, and after a missed three from Muhammad, Garza would get a three to fall to put the Hawkeyes up five as all the momentum was on their side. Cook threw down a dunk as Iowa went up 37-30, their largest lead of the game.

Ohio State was able to quiet the crowd a bit with a C.J. Jackson three-ball, but after a free throw and a finger-roll finish from Baer, the Iowa lead was back up to seven. Jackson knocked down another three, but Wieskamp answered at the other end with a layup. After a putback basket from Jallow, the Buckeyes found themselves trailing 42-38 with a little over 12 minutes remaining.

Kriener scored inside again and the Buckeyes picked up their sixth team foul of the period with 11:38 to go as Holtmann’s squad continued to flounder. Iowa extended the lead to eight with an alley-oop jam from Kriener as the Hawkeyes looked like they were taking control of the game. After two free throws from Wieskamp, Iowa found themselves up 51-41 with 8:23 remaining.

The Hawkeyes continued to add to their lead, as they worked their way into the double bonus with over seven minutes to go in the contest. The free throws continued to add up, and Iowa led 56-45 with 6:56 left on the clock.

It was a 61-45 lead for the home team as the crowd was worked into a frenzy. Ohio State could not get anything to fall as the Hawkeyes were in full command of the game. The Buckeyes were straight up outplayed down the stretch.

After the two teams played out what seemed like an eternity of a final five minutes for Ohio State, Iowa came away with what wound up being an easy 72-62 win.

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As they slip to 12-4 and don't look good, I think this could go either way.