Ohioans bring top talent to tournament
If Ohio has football as its heart, every other organ in its body can be dribbled. In fact, we ought to forget blocking the “O” and keep the vowel round, so it can bounce truly. Trademark?
Ohio, on an annual basis, produces more college basketball players than Indiana, Kentucky or Kansas. Many years, Ohio has as much basketball talent playing amid the madness as populous states such as California and Texas. It makes sense, given how we have rims hanging in balance between urban blacktops and rural barn boards.
It is an annual March habit of mine to pick through the rosters of NCAA Tournament teams and pluck out Ohioans, if not Buckeyes, and they are
everywhere, every year — even this year, which is not a banner year for the great state university.
Ohio is represented in the tournament by four schools — Cincinnati, Dayton, Kent State and Xavier. We say it all the time, and we’ll say it again: It’s a shame the MAC only gets but one bid. Good on Kent State for winning the conference tournament in Cleveland, but Akron and Ohio are also worthy this year. No question.
There are 48 Ohioans, not counting coaches, sprinkled throughout the NCAA Tournament field. The most prominent is Luke Kennard, a 6-foot-6 gunner from from Franklin, a suburb of Middletown — from whence sprang one of the greatest college players of all time.
You don’t have to like it, but you can make a case that Kennard, who averages 20.1 points and 5.3 boards, saved Duke’s season. And remember, folks, he’s only a sophomore.
V.J. King, a 6-6, freshman forward from Akron, averages 13.8 minutes per game for No. 2 seed Louisville. Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes, a senior from Toledo, and Michigan State’s Nick Ward, a freshman out of Gahanna, are crucial to their teams’ chances.
Elijah Macon, a junior forward who played at Marion-Franklin, is part of an all-Ohio trio at West Virginia which combines for 23.0 points a game.
I could go on here. My main man, though, is a Mansfield product.
Say hello to Keon Johnson, point guard for Winthrop University, which is located in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Johnson’s listed height is 5-7. He is said to be the secondsmallest player in this year’s tournament. In any case, he will need a growth spurt to hit 5-7.
Johnson, a senior, has scored 2,041 points in his career. I don’t care whether you’re playing in Rock Hill or Alcatraz: If you put up 2,000 points at a Division I school, you have some serious game. And if you do this while being vertically challenged, you’re smarter than everybody else.
This season, Johnson averaged 22.5 points and outscored all but nine D-I players in the country. And then he averaged 29.3 in the Big South Conference tournament.
Johnson’s game is akin to that of Boston Celtics leprechaun Isaiah Thomas. He can knock down jumpers from different ZIP codes. He can slash the lane and he has an uncanny ability to get the ball to the rim. Knock him down, and he’ll knock ’em down; he shoots 86.8 percent from the free-throw line.
Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey grew up in Cincinnati. He was an undersized guard at Xavier and an understudy to the late, great Skip Prosser. Kelsey is no dummy. He recruits Ohio. Hard.
Kelsey took a chance on Johnson when nobody else would. Four years later, Winthrop is making their first tournament appearance since 2010.
The Winthrop Eagles are a No. 13 seed. They play No. 4 Butler in Milwaukee on Thursday. It will be the 10th anniversary, to the day, of 11th-seeded Winthrop’s firstround upset of No. 6 Notre Dame.
Give it up now: O-H … Trademark?