Category: Buckeyes Wire

WATCH: Bizarre flagrant foul against Michigan that aided Ohio State’s win

Michigan guard Zavier Simpson was assessed a flagrant foul that was truly bizarre against Ohio State’s Kyle Young. Watch here.

It sure feels good to go on the road and beat Michigan no matter the sport if you’re allegiances lie with Ohio State. Tuesday night was a good night then for all of Buckeye Nation, as OSU took care of business up in Ann Arbor, winning 61-58 in a physical battle.

But with any game that’s a nip and tuck affair like this one was throughout, a break here, a bounce of the ball there, or a referee’s call often has an impact on the outcome. So it was tonight.

Ohio State was nursing a one-point lead with under a minute left when Michigan guard Zavier Simpson drove to his left and took the ball straight at Kyle Young at the rim. A foul was called on Young, sending Simpson to the line. But that wasn’t all. Young — who actually never fouled the Wolverine guard in the first place — came away from the action with a ripped jersey.

That led to a review of the play by the officials who then proceeded to call a flagrant one foul on Simpson for grabbing the OSU forward’s jersey and pulling on it as he went to the ground. So, not only did Michigan get two free throws for the foul on Young, but then Ohio State received two of its own and the ball out of bounds.

Enter more controversy and weirdness into an Ohio State – Michigan matchup. And of course, it had a ton to do with the outcome of the game.

You can get a look at this truly strange and bizarre turn of events in the below Twitter video posted by the Big Ten Network.

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We can honestly say we’ve never seen this before. No matter which team you are a fan of, it’s definitely one of the strangest endings to a basketball game you’ll ever see.

 

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WATCH what Chris Holtmann said after Ohio State’s win over Michigan postgame

Chris Holtmann was pleased after the big victory over Michigan Tuesday. Watch and listen to what he said in his postgame press conference.

Ohio State got a key Big Ten road win, the kind of victory that can turn a season back around in a positive direction. But it wasn’t just a win, but how the team went about getting it done. It fought through some adversity and a hostile crowd to get a road victory in a conference that allows those very often.

Head coach Chris Holtmann was understandably pleased after the game. He met with the media in Ann Arbor to field questions and had a lot to say. If you didn’t get a chance to catch everything, you can get all of his comments thanks to Adam Jardy of the Columbus Dispatch.

Click on the below video and listen to Holtmann discuss his team’s toughness, Kaleb Wesson’s performance, the physical nature of the game, and more.

Ohio State is next in action Sunday on the road against Wisconsin. It just doesn’t get any easier in the deep and talented Big Ten.

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Ohio State basketball beats Michigan: Three things we learned

Ohio State went on the road and got a big win against Michigan. Here are three things we learned after the victory.

Boy has it been a yo-yo season for the Ohio State basketball team. It started out white-hot, winning its first nine games, and eleven of the first twelve. Then the proverbial wheels fell off when the calendar flipped to 2020. The Buckeyes went on to lose six of seven, falling out of the top 25 rankings and sitting at the bottom of the league.

Now, OSU seems to have found its early in the season form, winning three straight — two of them on the road to turn the ship back out into open water. The last of those a really good victory in Ann Arbor against arch-rival Michigan.

And that’s where we pick things up. Here are three things we learned from Ohio State’s 61-58 victory over That Team Up North.

Next … A trend worth noting

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Ohio State battles though adversity, beats Michigan in Ann Arbor

Ohio State battled through a rough and tumble game against Michigan on the road for a key Big Ten win.

The Ohio State basketball team just got a huge win on the road, and it was against a familiar foe — Michigan. It’s been hard enough to win away from home this year in the Big Ten, but Ohio State has now done it the last two times out. First against Northwestern, and now against That School Up North.

The game was tight all the way throughout, but the Buckeyes did just enough down the stretch to pull out a hard-fought 61-58 victory. To do it though, they had to fight through a lot of adversity.

For starters, Ohio State couldn’t keep Michigan off the glass on offense. The Wolverines grabbed fourteen offensive rebounds, giving them extra possessions to make up for a poor shooting night. OSU also lost the ball-handling skills of Luther Muhammad midway through the second half that cut into the bench and changed the rotations.

But it didn’t matter much.

That’s because there were some extremely positive things going too. Ohio State only turned the ball over eight times for the entire game, and made seven three-pointers to equalize the effort on the glass by Michigan.

It was an evenly played game throughout, but it was a controversial call at the end that gave Ohio State the opportunity to win the game. Michigan guard Zavier Simpson drove to the rim down one with under a minute left and drew a shooting foul. However, he also pulled on Kyle Young’s jersey, ripping it on the way to the ground. After a lengthy review, Simpson was assessed a flagrant one giving Ohio State two shots and the ball.

Simpson hit his two free throws for the common foul, then Young was clutch and buried his two to give the Buckeyes the one-point lead. On the ensuing possession, C.J. Walker also got fouled and nailed two free throws. Michigan had one last chance but was unable to nail the game-tying three.

Game over.

With the win, Ohio State improves to 15-7 overall and pulls within one game of .500 (5-6) in the Big Ten. More importantly, it’s a quad 1 win on the road that gets the Buckeyes further away from bubble territory.

 

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Cincinnati’s Luke Fickell is “front-runner” for Michigan State head-coaching gig

The Buckeyes may be seeing a familiar foe more consistently as Luke Fickell is the frontrunner for the Michigan State HC position.

The Ohio State Buckeyes could be seeing a familiar face more consistently as Luke Fickell is reportedly the frontrunner for the Michigan State head coaching position.

This report comes just hours after Mark Dantonio stepped down as Michigan State’s head football coach. Dantonio has been the Spartans’ coach since 2007 and has recorded six winning seasons in that time.

As for Fickell, he started off his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Ohio State, left for Akron and returned to eventually become the program’s defensive coordinator.

After the 2016 season, Fickell left to take the head coaching position at Cincinnati, a program he’s completely turned around. After a 4-8 win season in 2017, Fickell has gone 22-5 in the last two seasons.

That type of success gets big-time programs like Michigan State looking, and Fickell may soon be the Spartans coach.

“Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell is the front-runner to replace Mark Dantonio as Michigan State’s football coach,Ā multiple sources with knowledge of the athletic department’s thinking told the Free Press on Tuesday,”Ā Detroit Free Press‘ Chris Solari reported.

This will be quite the development and a testament to how skilled of a coach Fickell is. Trained at Ohio State, it should make the university proud to see his continued success.

The only question if the offer comes, is if Fickell is willing to make the leap to another team with a different view of rivalry with Michigan.

Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio steps down

Mark Dantonio is retiring as the head coach of the Michigan State football program. He announced the news on Twitter Tuesday.

While Michigan is apparently looking to extend the contract of its head coach Jim Harbaugh, its in-state rival Michigan State is going in the other direction.

That’s because the former Ohio State defensive coordinator who elevated the Spartan program to one of the best in the Big Ten, and often the country, announced his intentions to step down on Twitter Tuesday. Mark Dantonio provided a long statement that boils down to spending more time with family.

Dantonio took over the Michigan State program in 2007 and quickly put his stamp on the program. He compiled a program-record 114 wins to 57 losses. He steered the program to three Big Ten titles, a Rose Bowl, a Cotton Bowl and even an appearance in the College Football Playoff in 2015.

Now the search for a new coach begins for one of the programs that has provided the most resistance against Ohio State in years past.

Ohio State battles, goes into halftime up by one at Michigan

Ohio State is battling Michigan hard on the road and leads by one point headed to the break.

The Ohio State basketball team is trying to get a big win on the road against Michigan, and so far so good — at least in terms of being one point better than the Wolverines headed into the half.

The Buckeyes had a great start, going up by as many as nine points midway through the first half, but then Michigan began to reel things in. They have done it largely on the back of Kaleb Wesson, who has fifteen of OSU’s 28 points — including going 3 of 5 from beyond the arc. The next highest scorer for the Buckeyes is Kyle Young with four points.

Aside from the scoring, Ohio State has taken very good care of the basketball, turning it over just three times in the first half. However, Michigan has shot five free throws to OSU’s zero, and has grabbed nine offensive rebounds. That allowed the Wolverines to keep tit close, and will have to change in the second half.

Either way, if Ohio State can take care of the ball over the last twenty minutes, find a couple of other scorers and lock it down on the boards, it’ll have a good chance of pulling this one out.

And boy would that be big.

Ohio State football All-Decade Team, Defense

If you were selecting the best player for each position on an Ohio State football team of the decade, who would they be? We took a stab.

The sun already set on college football down in New Orleans just a couple of weeks ago. The Super Bowl just gave us our last hurrah as well Sunday night. So, we’ve got a question for you: Are you missing the good ‘ole American game yet? Yeah, yeah, there’s the whole reboot of the XFL, but for all intents and purposes, the game we know and love is now on a hiatus until the fall.

But that’s okay. We’re going to fill that time with some reflections on the decade that just passed us by for Ohio State. It was one that was filled with several Big Ten Championships, a national title, and a slew of wins over That Team Up North.

But who are the best of the best from the 2010s? There’s a ton of really good players to choose from, and we’re doing our best to identify them in a series of posts dealing with the best of the decade of Ohio State football.

We already looked at our All-Decade Offensive Team, and now it’s time to identify our All-Decade Defensive Tem. What players would you choose from 2010 through 2019 to field the best of the best defensive team?

Next … The defensive line

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Ohio State Wrestling now has three No. 1 wrestlers

The Ohio State Buckeyes lead all wrestling programs with three wrestlers ranked No. 1 in their respective weight classes.

Ohio State might not be the No. 1 wrestling team in the country right now (that distinction belongs to Iowa), but the Buckeyes do have more wrestlers at the top of their weight class than any other school in the country.

Iowa is the only other school with two No. 1 wrestlers–Spencer Lee at 125 pounds and Michael Kemerer at 174 pounds.

Kollin Moore, the talented senior who is finally looking to fulfill his goal of winning a National Championship (he has placed third, fourth, and second in his career), has been the far-and-ahead No. 1 at 197 pounds since this season started. He is undefeated on the year and has only really been close to danger in two matches.

At 141 pounds, Luke Pletcher started the year at No. 3. He beat then-No. 1 Dom Demas at the season-opening Michigan State Open, and has held on to the top spot ever since. Like Moore, he is also undefeated, and was only ever pushed to the brink by Demas and Real Woods, another Top 10 wrestler. Pletcher has earned bonus points in his last 11 matches.

Now, joining Moore and Pletcher, is Sammy Sasso. Sasso jumped to No. 2 last week with huge wins over then-No. 1 Pat Lugo and then-No.4 Baryton Lee. He was still behind Oklahoma State’s Boo Lewallen, though. Lewallen then lost to Missouri’s Brock Mauller on Saturday, which moved Sasso up to No. 1.

Ohio State also had four other wrestlers ranked, including a huge jump by Rocky Jordan at 184 pounds. Kaleb Romero, the No. 7 wrestler at 174 pounds, is the only other Buckeye in the Top 10 right now.

After a rough few weeks with six losses–five of them to highly-ranked wrestlers–Jordan Decatur fell out of the rankings. He is still definitely a threat to anyone in the 133 pound weight class, though.

125 and 157 pounds remain the troublesome spots for the Buckeyes, though there seem to be stronger options at 157 right now.

Cleveland Browns reportedly set to hire former Ohio State defensive coordinator Fred Pagac

Former Ohio State defensive coordinator Fred Pagac will be joining Kevin Stefanski’s coaching staff as the Browns’ linebacker coach.

Former Ohio State defensive coordinator Fred Pagac will be joining Kevin Stefanski’s coaching staff as the Browns’ linebacker coach according to reports.

Stefanski is taking over after a severely underwhelming season from Freddie Kitchens. While all the blame cannot be put on Kitchens, overturning the coaching staff was the easy answer for management.

Now, Stefanski has been able to retool the coaching staff, a group that will include several highly qualified names like Pagac.

Before making what’s seemingly a permanent jump to the professional game, Pagac spent over two decades in Columbus, moving from a graduate assistant all the way up to defensive coordinator where he put his stamp on an aggressive, attacking style of defense that featured guys like Mike Vrabel, Andy Katzenmoyer, Antoine Winfield, Na’il Diggs, and others.

That said, the news from first broke by Sirius XMNFL’s Alex Marvez.

After going 7-8-1 two seasons ago, the Browns, who came into 2019 with expectations of contending for the AFC North, won a mere six games. They needed to do better, and the hope is that they will start to make significant improvements with the hiring of Pagac and others.

Let’s just hope his addition can help result in more success for an organization that’s seen so much struggle in recent years.

 

Contact/Follow usĀ @BuckeyesWireĀ on Twitter, and like our page onĀ FacebookĀ to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion.

We have a forum and message board now. Get in on the conversation about Ohio State athletics by joining theĀ Buckeyes Wire Forum.