OT: Buckeyes lose to D2 Rollins (UPDATE: & NAIA Webber Int'l)
Muhahahahaha! The Buckeyes, consensus to win the Big Ten continue to struggle. They lost to Bethune-Cookman (meh loss) and Division II Rollins.
Had to share that. The Big Ten is shaping up to be a two horse race between Michigan and Michigan State (who don't actually play each other IN conference this year).
UPDATE:
It's final. OSU loses 9-0 to the Webber International Warriors of the NAIA. Oh happy day!
Baseball?
Es Beisbol
March 24th, 2010 at 10:41 PM ^
With FA, if you don't know, then there's always a good chance the topic is baseball.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:57 PM ^
At least this time of year. Could be volleyball in the fall.
Baseball been bery bery good to me.
Damn beat me to it. Move along nothing to see here.
I don't care if the OP is talking about chess or Equestrian, the simple though of o$u losing to schools no one has ever heard of is great!
March 25th, 2010 at 12:11 AM ^
[[comment about OSU sucking]]
How does Michigan not play MSU? I thought baseball had a ton of games in the season.
We play MSU, just not "in" conference this year, ie does not count in big ten standings. One of those schedule rotation things, I believe.
As mentioned above, there's 11 teams in the BigTen, so they rotate off for two years very infrequently. This is one of those times. We do have a home and home midweek series set up with them in May. This probably works well as it's a much better RPI team than we would normally play in the midweek, especially with our other major midweek opponent (Notre Dame) having a bad year.
Or a Junior College?
LoL
Feeling no pity...
March 24th, 2010 at 11:28 PM ^
Actually 10 teams--no Wisconsin--but each team only plays an 8-weekend schedule, so everybody misses 1 opponent each year.
They could play a full round robin, but the Big Ten obviously thinks it's too early for baseball (but not softball) this weekend. After that, it's 8 straight weekends of conference baseball, followed by the conference tournament.
I still think they should go to the full round robin. There are really 3 different ways to do that:
(1) start 1 weekend earlier--the same weekend that MAC baseball and Big Ten softball start;
(2) go 1 weekend longer, and eliminate the conference tournament; or
(3) play the 9th conference series in Florida in February. Either the weekend before or the weekend after the Big Ten-Big East challenge.
Now that the southern schools have added a week back onto the schedule in February, I kind of like option 3.
Yeah, don't know what I was thinking there. It is the 9 week "regular season" schedule that hurts.
I'm personally a fan of the round robin, but it comes with a price. Unlike softball, the BigTen isn't a very good conference. Playing more games against the BigTen can bring down your RPI if it's the right team. That's why we've gone from 4 game weekends to 3 game weekends as of last year. That cut off 8 games that really didn't help anyone's RPI. Michigan has adjusted to play an extra weekend of tough games. Ohio State adjusted to play a D2 and a NAIA team this week.
This same lowering of the RPI reason is why I think we've kept the conference tournament. It allows our top 6 teams to play teams with higher RPIs in most cases. Indiana winning it last year came from nowhere. If the BigTen were a stronger conference, I'd be down for eliminating the tournament, but in the current set up, that's tough.
As far as option 1, weather does become an issue many years. Home opening weekend and even the week that opens Big Ten play have repeated been cut short or totally canceled due to weather. This being an El Nino year (which brings slightly above average temperatures to the Midwest earlier) has helped out a bit with the weather, but that's not something to rely on every season. Perhaps if the week was added to the end of the season, they would add it, but I'm not sure.
#3 is an intriguing idea, but I wonder if the coaches will want to chance a BigTen series during the first or two that they spend outside practicing. Sure, all teams are at a disadvantage, but I'd rather be playing my conference schedule, the schedule that matters, when I'm playing my best baseball.
March 25th, 2010 at 10:22 AM ^
NAIA team?!
Guess baseball isn't real high on the priority list at OSU.
March 25th, 2010 at 12:46 PM ^
It's coach Todd's prospective that if they get enough wins (regardless of who they're against), and they can win the BigTen regular season/tournament, they will get to host a regional. It's worked in the past, but I think that's a fading proposition. So he lines his schedule up with maybe 2-3 games against teams expected to be in the top 30 and the rest with cupcakes.
LOL. He should ask a UVA fan about what happens when you go 43-12 and win the conference tournament. You get a regional 2 seed and you get shipped all the way to California to face Irvine and Stephen Strasburg State. Fading proposition....I'd say those days are over. I hope the committee looks upon OSU as kindly as they did UVA last year. Maybe they can get fed to Florida State again. NAIA....seriously.
If you can manage a big win or two, it can be done. The committee loves the Midwest/Northern token regional. Louisville all but has it sewn up this year. They're "north enough" as part of the Big East. If you look at OSU last year, the same thing happened. They got shipped to the same regional as UGa and FSU. They went 2-2, with both losing scores by 20+ runs, including the FSU 32 run lead in the 5th inning.
I remember that and it was hilarious. I also remember thinking I wouldn't have minded much if that FSU score were reversed, but if someone has to win, they may as well make the other guy look really, really bad.
But it wouldn't even come close to the embarrassment that'll happen if they lose to Webber.
They're down 6-0 in the 7th!
March 24th, 2010 at 11:41 PM ^
I don't know a ton about it, but I have heard that it is the closest thing Florida has to a Duke/Stanford level private school.
March 24th, 2010 at 11:59 PM ^
Anyone know where I can get a Rollins Collins T-shirt?
March 25th, 2010 at 12:50 AM ^
... not one circle j**ker on here has brought up that this is an "uninformative" post! Looks like they hibernate when football isn't on.
Edit... looks like the CJ aren't in hibernation after all!
MSU? really? i need to check the B10 records.
Conference play starts next weekend. MSU is doing really well though. They've got a great 1-2 combo to start their rotation and they are actually hitting the ball this year (as compared to last with great starting pitching with no offense). They lack a "big win", but they've handily taken care of teams they should have.
Appy State?
Nah, that'd be Minnesota losing to North Dakota State last week. I mean, at least North Dakota State is a really good D2 team. While Minnesota was supposed to be good this year, that's not a horrible and catastrophic loss when viewed by the local, knowledgeable fan base, it's just a really bad one. I'd compare that to our ASU loss, as I expected a close game settled by a last minute defensive stand. ASU was a good team and our weakness. NDSU would be comparable to Minnesota. OSU though, they lost to a meh D2 school. This would be like if we had loss to DSU last year.
The thing with baseball is that depending on a team's schedule, you could be looking at a pitching matchup of one team's #1 vs. another team's #4 or #5. I don't know the details behind each team, but I know that D2 baseball down south is legit, probably more competitive than some northern D1 teams. Rollins also beat the #12 team in the nation last week, so they could be hot right now.
Yeah, no disagreement there. But OSU is also losing to an NAIA team today. It's 1-0 in the fourth. I'm living this up. Neither of these games count toward RPI (or at least I know the NAIA game doesn't).
Go Webber International!
4-0 Webber now with Webber still batting in the bottom of the fifth. Holy.....
Top 7....Webber 6, OSU 0.
Whoops, I guess I could have scrolled down to this one.
In the Buck's defense, this is their 8th game in 7 days. But still, I'm thoroughly enjoying this.
Ditto.
By the way, 8-0, 1 out in the bottom of 7, bases loaded for Webber.
They're not just losing. It's officially an ass-kicking.
My buddy is back to blogging about Ohio State as of the 7th inning:
Buckeye Nine is Back in Play
He's disgusted beyond belief. He was thinking about turning back to his boyhood team (he grew up in East Lansing), but yeah, he couldn't go that far.
Yeah, I'm not trying to defend tuos, I want to see them lose just as much as the next guy. We played them three times when I was at Toledo, and lost every time. We were also 1-1 vs UM. We had one game in the bag and gave it away (2005). We won in 2006.
OSU lost to D2 Findlay in bball a few years back
The first three notes on their Webber Int'l release:
- It's a nice park at Webber International. Right on a lake in Babson Park and the field looks pretty well manicured.
- Once the bus came within about five miles of Webber International, all we saw were orange groves everywhere.
- It's pretty difficult to compare the size of these schools. While the autumn 2009 enrollment at Ohio State was 52,715 for the Columbus campus, Webber International currently has 617 students.
There needs to be a large student contingent at the OSU series later this season, armed with some choice chants and heckles. Maybe the hockey crowd can get interested in baseball between now and then.
Lets not overlook East West State and the Ivan Brothers