Buckeyes once had whopper of losing streak
Senior Petcare program delivers pet food to those in need
After three consecutive losses, the Ohio State men’s basketball team has lost its edge and its coach is on edge, but the Buckeyes and Chris Holtmann have yet to go over the edge. Of the cliff. Or the bench.
Even if No. 4 Illinois comes into Value City Arena on Saturday and hands OSU its fourth loss in a row, there still would be miles of “L’s” to go before hitting rock bottom.
That’s not to say anyone in Buckeyeland is happy with where Ohio State is at the moment. After climbing to No. 4 in the polls, and staying there even after losing to Michigan on Feb. 21, the Buckeyes slid to No. 7 following losses to unranked Michigan State and Iowa, which was No. 9 at the time.
The Buckeyes now must defeat the Illini on senior day to avoid losing four straight for the third consecutive season.
The defense needs work. Duane Washington Jr. needs to be the same slasher who scored 30 points against Michigan. E.J. Liddell has to get tougher inside and not rely on the 10-foot fadeaway. Justin Ahrens needs to get open. Justice Sueing needs to wake up.
That is hard reality, but so is this: No matter what unforeseen misfortune happens the rest of the way — whether surprisingly quick exits from the Big Ten or NCAA Tournaments — these Buckeyes will never descend into the Mariana Trench of sadness that saw the 1997-98 team lose 17 consecutive games. Seven. Teen.
Former Ohio State center Ken Johnson was there for every one of the losses, including 14 in a row to Big Ten opponents, which in part explains why he has repressed the negative memories of his sophomore season.
The other part? “I’m getting old, man,” Johnson said on Friday.
The ’97-98 season did not help his aging process. Johnson joined freshman scoring machine Michael Redd, a few well-intending upperclassmen and a handful of holdovers from the tumultuous end of Randy Ayers’ college coaching career to spackle a 8-22 season that included a 1-15 record in the Big Ten.
But those trials also allow Johnson to encourage the Buckeyes that what feels like a 30-story fall is just a stumble off the bottom step.
“That’s nothing at all, oh my goodness,” Johnson said of the current three-game swoon.
What Johnson experienced was 17 games of nothing that seem hard to believe. For perspective, I caught up with Bob Baptist, former Ohio State men’s basketball beat writer for The Dispatch, who covered the 1997-98 team coached by Jim O’brien.
Baptist’s recollection of the crime scene wasn’t pretty, but in hindsight was pretty funny, at least to those not playing the games.
“I had a cut-and-paste paragraph stored in my computer that I would just plug in after every loss, and update the numbers,” Baptist recalled. “Obie said” — and here Baptist imitates the former coach’s Brooklyn accent — “‘Do you have to write that losing streak in every story?’ ”
Of course he did. Baptist, a proud product of Watergate-era journalism, worked for the paper, not the coach.
Early in the skid, as OSU was going 0-3 during the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii, Baptist watched O’brien go over the bench to confront a fan who had been heckling him.
Compared with that, Holtmann picking up two technical fouls and getting ejected in the final seconds of the loss to Michigan State on Feb. 25 is child’s play.
Later in the streak, it was an opposing coach who got vocal with fans. As Purdue pounded the Buckeyes 107-75 in St. John Arena — the last season all games were played in St. John before moving to the new Schottenstein Center a year later — Boilermakers coach Gene Keady jawed with Ohio State fans.
Baptist chuckled while recalling that “Keady said he was just paying them back for all those years of football.”
Stress increased and patience decreased during the 17-game stench, but Johnson said the Buckeyes never turned on each other. He emphasized that current players can learn from how he and his teammates handled the struggle.
“We had to go out there and fight,” Johnson said. “These Ohio State Buckeyes now have to find that leader, someone who will step up and bring them over that hump.”
For the ‘97-98 Buckeyes that someone was Scoonie Penn, who though sitting out the season as a transfer from Boston College still was working behind the scenes.
“Scoonie was a major factor. He wouldn’t let us quit,” Johnson said.
Baptist remembers that “Scoonie beat them every day in practice, with the second team.”
In an amazing one-year turnaround, Penn and Redd led Ohio State to the 1999 Final Four. No wonder Johnson isn’t worried about a “mini” losing streak.
“They got it made,” he said. “Just play hard … and find that hunger again. They’ll be fine.”
The cliff edge is not that close, even if falling to Illinois would still hurt. roller@dispatch.com
@rollercd
Natalie Joe’s two Siamese cats, Mikey and Buddy, mean everything to her.
“They are my best friends,” the 59-year-old East Side resident said. “They’ve been through so much with me … and they know when I’m sad or when I’m depressed. They’ll look at me like, ‘I wish I could talk to you.’”
Despite her deep love for her cats, she almost had to give them up about five years ago because she was having a hard time affording cat food. She went through a period were all she would eat was ramen noodles so that she had enough money left over to buy cat food and kitty litter.
“I had to make sure they ate, but the worrying part is heavy on your heart,” Joe said.
Shortly after she started started receiving Meals on Wheels through Lifecare Alliance a
few years ago, she learned about the nonprofit’s Senior Petcare program. Similar to Meals on Wheels, the pet program regularly delivers dog and cat food to people’s front doors. To receive the monthly pet food, someone must be a client of Lifecare Alliance, which serves older adults, the medically challenged and homebound adults.
“I’m so thankful for them every time they show up,” she said. “I couldn’t sit around and watch (my cats) not eat. They are my everything, so (Petcare) benefits me 100%.”
The Senior Petcare program started in 2005 after Lifecare Alliance realized that people who received assistance through Meals on Wheels sometimes fed their pets with the food that was delivered, said Chuck Gehring, president and CEO of Lifecare Alliance, one of central Ohio’s largest and oldest charities.
“What we give you to eat, you need to eat yourself for the nutrition of it, and cats don’t need Salisbury steak,” he said. “It was a real issue.”
Another issue, he said, is that people living on a fixed income often end up giving away their pet because they can’t afford it. Without the program, many clients would have to choose between buying medicine for themselves or buying food for their pet, Gehring said.
“The pet is their social worker. It’s their depression counselor. It’s their security system,” he said. “We just felt it was so critical.”
The Senior Petcare program currently helps feeds about 1,200 pets in Franklin, Madison, Champaign, Logan and Marion counties, Gehring said. A lot of the food used for the program comes in the form of donated, broken bags of pet food from Walmart that would have otherwise gone to waste.
Michael Kennison has a 9-year-old French bulldog named Princeton, and he has been receiving food through the Senior Petcare program for a few years.
“The dog food can be costly,” the 62year-old Marion resident said. “I’m on a fixed income with my monthly amount that comes in, so it helps quite a bit instead of buying the food.”
He said he usually gets a 10- or 20pound bag of dry dog food as well as wet dog food through Senior Petcare.
“We consider (Princeton) part of the family,” Kennison said. “When you have somebody around you for nine, 10 years, they are like family. It’s like one of your own. It’s almost like a child, and he’s really affectionate.”
If it weren’t for the program, Princeton would still get fed somehow, but Kennison said it would be a struggle for him.
“We’re thankful for the program, and we appreciate all the help that is given,” he said.
Most Senior Petcare clients have a monthly income of less than $1,200, Gehring said.
“You don’t have the money for the pet food anymore,” he said. “You just don’t have it.”
Senior Petcare volunteer Liz Alcalde has delivery routes for the program on the East and South sides. She first got involved with Lifecare through its Meal on Wheels program about four years ago, and then started delivering pet food soon after.
“Dog food is expensive, so everybody that I deliver to is really, really struggling financially, and I just really think it’s important that they are allowed to have their pet with them,” the 65-year-old Clintonville resident said.
“It sounds like a bit like a luxury, but it really isn’t. For many of these people, it’s their only companion.” mhenry@dispatch.com @megankhenry
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