John Groce, who has been with Thad Matta for eight years as assistant head coach will be named the head Coach at Ohio University today. Groce was with Matta ab Butler, Xavier and four years at Ohio State. He was an excellent recruiter and top notch individual. He will be sorely missed and I am curious who Matta will seek for the vacancy. Don
Doesn't matter. If Ohio State doesn't beat USC in football, I hear they're cancelling the basketball season altogether.
I remember reading recently that the Ohio Univ coach was leaving (voluntarily) for another school. The thing that struck me was that it was for a school I'd never heard of and that seemed odd. Ohio is in the MAC right, so it should be a pretty good job, and like I said I've never heard of the school that lured him away.
Terry, The coach at Ohio who resigned, decided he liked the East coast better, which is where he was from originally. Sid, Granted we are primarily a football school, but some of us take our basketball rather seriously. Indiana might be struggling this year? Don
My reply to your post was very tongue in cheek and not intended to be a knock on Ohio State basketball which has become a national player under Matta. Speaking of basketball, Bruce Pearl keeps hitting 'em out of the park in recruiting. He picked up a commitment from Emanuel Negedu a couple of weeks ago bringing the total number of commitments in this year's class to 6. Among those 6 are McDonald's AA swingman Scotty Hopson, talented Juco PG Bobby Maze, a 4 star F in Renaldo Woolridge, and 3 stars at C and PG in Philip Jurick and Daniel West. I think it's going to be a great fall on Rocky Top but an even better winter/early spring despite the losses of Jajuan Smith and Chris Lofton.
Don, Methinks you might have misinterpreted my laugh. I was responding to Aquila's tongue-in-cheek reference to MCG's obsessive rants about OSU's football team and how important the OSU-USC football game is to OSU's reputation. I have complete respect for OSU as a BB power in the Big 10 and beyond. No issue there at all. Re: Indiana. This will be a horrible year for IU basketball. The fallout from the Sampson fiasco resulted in almost all of the returning scholarship players either tranferring or being kicked off the team. It will be a ragtag bunch of freshmen,, walkons, and - I think but am not sure - only one returning scholarship player. But you don't hear complaints from the IU faithful. They are happy to have Crean as the coach, are resigned to the present situation, and are looking to the future. IU got an early Christmas present today. The AD announced that he was resigning effective at year-end following the NCAA's release of a letter indicating that IU was guilty of "failure to monitor" the mens BB program. Here's an excerpt from the article: His exit is long overdue primarily because of the steady deterioration of the school's reputation under his watch, culminating in the near destruction of what was once one of the country's most prestigious BB programs. He will receive a termination package of a year's salary, which leads me to believe he was canned but allowed to say he is resigning. Good riddance.
Sid, Aquila... Clever stuff and a welcome respite from the cloud of simple-minded assaults under which we all are struggling to escape.....thanks for joining in with the chuckles!