Volleyball. OSU Volleyball is playing well right now. Last Saturday night, I had the honor and pleasure of going to Loyola to watch the 8th Ranked (at the time) Buckeyes take on the #14 (at the time) Loyola Ramblers play an important MIVA (Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association) match.
Both teams were coming off of losses. OSU lost its first MIVA match of the year at top 10 Lewis while Loyola suffered a defeat at the hand of IPFW (for those of you that are unaware IPFW is a hybrid school. It stands for Indiana Purdue at Fort Wayne, that is a mouthful to say).
The match started off tight with Loyola taking a 3-1 lead in the first game before OSU stormed back to tie it at 7 all. From that point on OSU turned in a dominant match. Seniors Shawn Sangrey and Mike Berzins (who has a brother who plays for Loyola and one who coaches Loyola) led the Buckeyes with 16 and 11 kills respectively. Sangrey who has numerous awards including player of the week, All-NCAA Tournament as a Junior, and various Academic and All-Conference awards was just totally dominant.
Along with his kills, he had digs and blocks, and his left handed serve is almost nonreturnable (In all of the volleyball matches I have been too, and I went to a lot at OSU, I have never seen a ball dip and move like his serve). This Buckeye squad showed me a lot this past Saturday night, though I won’t get to anymore matches, I do plan on following them for the remainder of the season.
This week they travel for two matches in Pennsylvania (before a long 15 day layoff), including one against national ranked and perennial power Penn State. It should be fun.
Women’s Basketball. The Lady Buckeyes have completed a strong regular season and are getting ready to start play in the always tough Big Ten Women’s Tournament. The Buckeyes are aiming to win their fourth consecutive post season Big Ten Title. The Buckeyes, led by superstar senior guard Sammy Prahalis, finished the year perfect at home with a 19-0 record and were 24-5 overall. Speaking of Sammy Prahalis, she has helped keep a strong tradition in Columbus.
Over the last 7 years an OSU woman has either won outright or shared the B1G player of the year award (won by bigs Jantel Lavender and Jessica Davenport), well we can change that 7 to an 8. Sammy Prahalis was voted by the coaches and the media the B1G Player of the Year.
Prahalis was not the only Buckeye honored by the coaches and the media. Junior guard Amber Stokes was named B1G Defensive Player of the Year and along with Tayler Hill was named to the B1G All-Defensive Team.
Making the All-B1G first team was Prahalis and Hill. The ladies had a tough end stretch finishing with a 1-2 record including losses at ranked and Big Ten Champion Penn State and at Nebraska. The lady Buckeyes enter the tournament with the #2 seed and receive a first round bye. They will play the winner of the game #7 seeded TTUN and #10 seeded Illinois. It will be a great tournament, so get ready to cheer the Buckeyes on Indy.
Buckeye Men’s Basketball. As I type this article, I am watching this OSU vs Northwestern game. This is a game I have been nervous about for a few days. First of all it is hard, very hard to play well against Northwestern. They play that Princeton style back door offense, and they like to run that shot clock all of the way down, every possession (much like Wisconsin, and you remember how the Buckeyes only seemed to play 30 seconds out of every 35 seconds of defense per possession.
Also I don’t care who the team is, seniors (including leading conference scorer Jon Shurna) don’t like to lose on their Senior Night (though it was hard to tell that last week for both the Buckeyes and TTUN), both lost their Senior Nights. This has been an up and down game. The Buckeyes were dominant, Jared Sullinger was back to his double double ways in this game. He had 22 points and 18 rebounds. In fact he out rebounded the entire Northwestern team 18 – 16. Late in the game I began to once again question the heart of this team. Like the Wisconsin game, the Buckeyes let a big lead slip away late.
Northwestern made a huge run to tie the game late (late meaning only 7.7 seconds left). As I watched this ending, I couldn’t believe what was happening, were they going to lose it again? This time though super-sophomores Jared Sullinger and Aaron Craft (I hope Rex Kern is okay with letting me use that title) took over at the end. After a couple turnovers by Lenzelle Smith Jr. and Deshaun Thomas (two more sophomores) which led to the Northwestern 3 to tie. Craft brought the ball up the court gave a perfect leading pass to Sully and Jared dropped the pretty lay up.
All that was left was a prayer, that fell just short by Senior Jon Shurna. So we escape from Evanston, and now on to East Lansing to try and win a share of the B1G title. Which Buckeye team will show up this weekend? We will see!!
