Leave it to a cutter to give us straight up, no nonsense questions. This week, The Hoosier Report hosts the Big Ten round table. Be sure to stop by and check him out. (He’s the first/only Indiana blog I’ve every read.)
1. Call your shot. We are halfway through the Big Ten season (or, at least, most of us are). What will be your team’s final record? Where, if anywhere, will your team be spending late December/early January? Who will win the Big Ten?
Those of you who read this blog pretty much know where I stand. I have incredible confidence in the Buckeyes. I was a little concerned with after the first couple of games but they have proven that they did indeed “reload” as opposed to rebuild.
Meanwhile, the teams that were supposed to be the powerhouses of the Big Ten have let us down (Wisconsin, Michigan, even Penn State). I think the night game at Penn State will make for a good game but I don’t think it will be a stopper. The Buckeyes meet Wisconsin at home–I’m not worried. Illinois looks good but not this year and Michigan State still has a year or two to go. MSU will be an interesting game due to the fact that about everybody on both coaching staffs have worked together at one time or another.
That leaves us with Michigan. Once again, as long as Michigan can keep up their end of the bargain, the Big Ten will come down to Ohio State vs. Michigan. And this year, we travel to the wh …I mean Anne Arbor.
Michigan wants this game and they want it bad. This senior class that so boldly came back for another season with dreams of a national championship in their eyes has never beaten Ohio State. I don’t know if any other Michigan class can make that claim.
Ohio State will be ready. As I’ve said before, the only thing Michigan has going for it is Mike Hart. Chad Henne(now viewed more than 126,000 times) can’t handle the pressure and we all know the situation with Llllllloyd Carr.
The Buckeyes have built their season around the numbers 41-14 and there is no way they are going to let the Wolverines stand in the way of redemption.
2. How is your team’s coaching situation? Clearly, this varies from school to school, with some coaches approaching retirement (Carr/Paterno), some who are just starting out (Brewster/Fitzgerald), the unique case of Bill Lynch, and others who seem to be in their primes. If your coach is on the tail end of his career, where do you see things going from here? If he’s still early in his tenure, any buyer’s remorse? If he’s in he’s somewhere in the middle, are you happy or wishing things would go a different direction? How does your view correspond to the “majority” view among your school’s fans?
I can’t think of a better coaching situation for the Buckeyes. Tressel surrounds himself with character and expects the same from his players. Tressel knows not only how to coach a team but how to build a program. Watch the way he works players in when the Buckeyes are ahead. He knows how to build experience so that when younger players get the chance to step up, they are ready.
These are great days for Ohio State football and Coach Tressel deserves a big chunk of the credit.
BONUS BASKETBALL QUESTION: If you plan to cover basketball, give us a brief outlook for your team. Who is your best player? What do you expect from the team?
It figures that a Hoosier would knock me right out of the middle of a good football season with a question like that. At this point, I haven’t even looked at the basketball team. I like the coach and I know we had a great recruiting class. Other than that, I’m still living football.
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