Readers remain unimpressed with Ohio State men’s basketball
Unfortunately, we don't have room in the print edition for all of the great reader feedback we're getting. For more of the letters, go to Dispatch.com. Have more comments, questions? Reach out to me at bwhite1@dispatch.com.
On Ohio State basketball
To the editor: Athletic director Gene Smith is unwilling to drop the $3 million anchor mistake named coach Chris Holtmann. The OSU basketball ship is sinking and an SOS is sent to Les Wexner to please call Mr. Smith to drop the losing anchor and right the OSU ship before it sinks totally. Bring the Buckeye basketball program back to prominence, please, almighty Mr. Wexner.
Michael Oser, Columbus
To the editor: Well, (the OSU men's basketball problems) start with a few things. Recruiting, defense and teaching defense. The offense will be there if your team plays good defense. You can't be successful if you don't have an athletic, near-7-foot center to protect the rim and guards, forwards − anyone − who can stop penetration down the lane. It's hard to stop the other team when they have two, three, four players taller than your center.
Too many times the opposing team is able to dribble the ball right down the middle of the lane to either get a layup or throw the ball out to a wideopen 3-point shooter. It seems OSU can't recruit athletic basketball players who can guard anyone, or we can't teach them to do so. Tall, small or otherwise.
How many times has OSU been in situations late in games where they really need to press the other team and they don't? It's because they don't have anyone who can guard one-onone the length of the court. Their fullcourt press is atrocious. They seem miss-spaced on the floor, late getting to trapping spots and usually give up a layup. So they don't run the press. Soft, token pressure is the best they can do. This is not a phenomenon of just this year's team. This is a year-in and yearout problem with OSU men's basketball teams. It comes back to recruiting and teaching.
Dan Roe, Cambridge
To Brian: Living in Dayton, I watch both OSU and UD basketball. Obviously, UD gets the players Big Ten teams ignored, but they are still capable. UD
had two players out with injuries but has still done fairly well by running an offense that looks like one team rather than five players, which reflects well on UD coach Antony Grant. Just expecting to win with better talent as OSU did against lesser competition early in the season didn't work out so well once they got into conference play.
Dennis Singleton, Dayton
On Ohio State football
Dear Brian: I find Michael Arace's hand wringing and pearl clutching about no one wanting the OSU president or OSU football coach's jobs ridiculous. I don't know much about Kristina Johnson but she's the one that made the decision to step down. She wasn't fired. If she made a decision based on principle, good for her. I just wonder how much authority is within the president's job description to govern the OSU hospital system and the university's academic curricula. I do know this, after watching 30 minutes of a 60-minute Zoom call that was supposed to review admission standards and processes at OSU, but was instead a PSA for wokeequity-inclusion (all buzz words for discriminating against certain classes of people), my son rolled his eyes, disconnected from the call and promptly enrolled at Miami University. The point of sharing that? I'm sure that political presentation went across the desks of a lot of people and was approved by someone in the OSU president's office, so it's apparent that OSU (like a lot of academia) is pushing its own political perspective. Maybe some on the board of trustees don't agree with this? Does that make them wrong, as Mr. Arace would insinuate? I wonder how many other kids and parents watched that presentation and said, "No thanks, we just want a degree without being told there's something wrong with us."
As for the football coach position, it seems Mr. Arace is untethered from reality. To suggest OSU would have a problem filling the head coach role is beyond ludicrous. I spit my coffee out laughing after I read that. That said, I do agree that Ryan Day has done a great job and it would be a big loss if he left, but don't you think Luke Fickell or any number of highly qualified candidates would jump at the chance to be the head coach at Ohio State?
On another topic, The Dispatch used to do a great job of providing coverage of high school sports. For the past couple years there is literally nothing to be found related to scores and results anywhere on most days. The high school tab in the online Sports section goes weeks with the same articles but game writeups or coverage are limited to playoffs and tournament games. Even then there's a big void. What happened to Steve Blackledge? I also saw Bailey Johnson attached to some reporting. They both did a great job with the few articles I came across. Now there's next to nothing. What about recruiting people local to the schools to submit game recaps? Just a thought.
Tony Federer, Powell
To Tony: There are a lot of thoughts there, but I'll address our high school coverage and disagree with you. Our high school section on Dispatch.com changes stories several times a day. While we don't cover as many games as in the past − no newspapers do because of staffing and metrics that show such stories get low readership − we provide plenty of features, previews and topical stories. Andy Resnik, Dave Purpura and Frank Direnna are doing great work and crank out a lot of stories. Oh, and Steve Blackledge left The Dispatch a few years ago but still is of great help, and Bailey Johnson now covers the Crew, Blue Jackets and OSU women's basketball for us.