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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2007 > December
December 2007
For UD Fans: A game — maybe a year — to remember
One Dayton Flyers player after another raved about the raucous home crowd Saturday night after UD stunned the college basketball world and certainly No. 6 ranked and previously unbeaten Pittsburgh, 80-55, at UD Arena.
The winning margin would have been even greater — and, in fact, UD did lead by 30 at one point — but Flyers’ coach Brian Gregory emptied his bench in the final minutes.
The victory almost certainly will launch UD into an AP Top 25 ranking for the first time it four years. In crushing Pitt, the Flyers pulled off one of their most stunning upsets in the program’s history and they did it in front of a sold-out house, a national TV audience and a flock of NBA scouts who came to look especially at Pitt talent and walked out talking about nothing but UD guard Brian Roberts, who put on a one-man show.
And while it was Roberts’ 31-point, five-assist effort — along with Marcus Johnson’s double-double and Kurt Huelsman’s dominance inside — that triggered the 11-1 Flyers’ victory, a lot of the credit goes to the crowd, as well.
Most of the 13,435 people jammed into UD Arena seemed to be wearing red and that made those white towels — given to everyone courtesy of local car dealership, White-Allen — stand out all the more when they were waved non stop. That made the place about as frenzied as those Steelers’ games where their lathered loyalists continually flap their Terrible Towels.
“The crowd was crazy,” Roberts said afterward. “They definitely got us going. That’s as lively as I’ve seen it in my four years here. I’m sure it’ll be like that from here on out.”
And why not?
The Flyers are off to their best start in 29 years. They have a deep team and — in Roberts — one of the best guards in the nation.
“His performance tonight will certainly go down as one the best in college basketball this year,” Gregory said “Against a great team, he dominated the game.”
That assessment got no argument from Pitt junior guard Sam Young, who told Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
“He was on fire. We watched a lot of tape on him. We thought we had him figured out. But we didn’t. I give a lot of credit to Roberts. He hit a lot of tough shots. He put a lot of daggers in us. Every time I thought we might have a chance to come back, he’d make a tough shot. I take my hat off to him. He’s a tough player.”
Roberts has heard that kind of praise before, but he’s the first to tell you there’s more to UD’s success than just him:
“I look at myself as a pretty good player and I know going into every game the key aspect of the other team’s scouting report is figuring out a way to slow me down. But I got a whole bunch of guys on this team who can make plays and help out. It’s not a one man show — it’s definitely not.”
Saturday night — even with freshman star Chris Wright playing little because a deep bone bruise to his ankle — the Flyers never missed a beat.
If it wasn’t the acrobatic Marcus Johnson — he of 15 points and 11 rebounds — mimicking some of the Globetrotter magic of Marques Haynes, it was Huelsman morphing into the Incredible Hulk.
The 6-foot-10 sophomore center had 12 points and eight rebounds and got Pitt’s sensational freshman big man DeJaun Blair into quick foul trouble and forced him into a sub-par 9-point, 6-rebound night.
“I always say you have to double Kurt’s rebound total because even though he might not get them, he helps somebody else get them,” Gregory said. “They chose not to double down on Kurt. He doesn’t back down from anybody. He was a huge part of our success tonight.”
While the Panthers came into the game minus one starter — small forward Mike Cook tore his left ACL against Duke nine days earlier — and then lost starting point guard Levance Fields to a foot injury early in the second half, they can’t use that as an excuse for the way they were manhandled.
“Even though they blew us out last year at their place, we weren’t in awe,” Roberts said. “We knew they were a tough team, so we just had to out tough them.
“We knew coming in we had to play an almost perfect game. But we’re confident. We know we have a good team and tonight we showed it. I think we played about as best as we possibly could…We made a statement at Louisville and I think we made a bigger one today.
“But that said, we’re not satisfied. We want to do even better.”
For Flyers fans, it sure seems this is going to be one of those years to remember.
TweetBrowns-Bengals: “I swear he talked the whole game!”
CINCINNATI — He whooped and hollered and gyrated in front of the Bengals more than any Ben-Gal cheerleader.
He pulled his helmet off that shaved, pumpkin-sized head and stomped around his Cleveland Browns teammates like some over-fed sumo wrestler.
Shaun Smith was the show within the show Sunday at Paul Brown Stadium.
As the Cincinnati Bengals were putting the brakes on the Browns’ play-off dream with a 19-14 victory, Smith was waging his own “Battle of Ohio.”
For the Browns fountain of babble defensive lineman, this was a homecoming. In the first three years of his career, he played a few games with New Orleans and all the rest with the Bengals. He considered Cincinnati his NFL home. This was his first trip back to the Queen City since the Bengals let him go last off-season.
“Playing against my former teammates today, I felt I had something to prove,” Smith said after the game. “I felt like they should have kept me, but you know how it goes.”
And so he let them know about it, both with his play — he had a game-high eight solo tackles — and with his mouth.
“I didn’t pay him no mind the whole time,” said Bengals offensive lineman Bobbie Williams. “I swear he talked the whole game! I wasn’t even listening to him. I think he might have talked to everybody out there, including some in the stands. I’m like, ‘You can’t pay attention to this guy.’ “
Between some plays, the 325-pound Smith even drifted toward the Bengals bench and targeted coach Marvin Lewis. “Oh yeah it was back and forth with Marvin,” Smith grinned. “But hey Dog, it was nothing but love.”
He chattered at his pal T., J. Houshmandzadeh and once even gave the unsuspecting Bengals’ receiver a hard shove in the back long after a play. You’d never have guessed that Smith’s wife was sharing a private box at the game with Houshmandzadeh’s wife.
Even Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer got in the act, stepping toward Smith after one play and cupping a hand to his ear in “I can’t hear you” fashion.
The only truly flat note by Smith came when he got face mask to face mask with Bengals kicker Shayne Graham after a Cincinnati field goal in the second quarter and then shoved him. All the while he was yakking and there seemed to be little love in his verbal lava flow.
Afterward, as a few of us writers gathered around Smith in the dressing room, Chick Ludwig, our intrepid Bengals beat writer, asked him what was going on with Graham
“I blame him for the reason we lost last year and didn’t make the playoffs,” Smith told Chick. “That’s why I have so much — how do you say it — so much hatred toward him.”
We were incredulous at that. Was Smith putting us on? So Chick asked him if he was serious.
“Yeah,” he said. “I blame him. All he had to do was get the snap and kick the ball (against the Steelers in last year’s final regular season game) and we’d have been in the playoffs. I said the usual stuff I always say. I try to get guys ticked off during the game.”
After Sunday’s game, Graham took the high road and dismissed it as a “heat of the moment” exchange.
Smith kept turning up the “heat of the moment” thermostat on his own teammates, too. That’s what all the sumo stomping, chest thumping and top of the lungs urgings were about:
“I tried to let them know we were still in the game and to keep playing. Keep playing hard!”
When the game did end, Smith waddled to midfield, where he was received like a beloved prodigal son who had returned. One Cincinnati player after another — most of the team — came up and embraced him.
Bengals running back Kenny Watson patted him on the head. Defensive lineman John Thornton hugged him. Offensive guard Andrew Whitworth appeared to give him a little peck on the cheek. And Houshmandzadeh wrapped an arm half way around him and the two stood and talked.
“I left a lot of friends here,” a momentarily-softened Smith said afterward. “I’m really proud of T.J. If anyone had to, I was glad to see him make the TD catch today. He’s had a great year. I told him before the season he was gonna make the Pro Bowl.”
One of the last guys to leave the field, Smith finally rejoined his Browns teammates in their dressing quarters.
“It feels awkward being in the visitors’ locker room here,” he said. “Real weird.”
Then he shrugged and embraced his new situation: “Hey, it is what it is. I’m having a career year. I’m off to bigger and better things.”
Things that he told the Bengals about all day long.
TweetReactions to the Theresa Check Story
No recent story of mine has drawn more reaction from readers young and old, black and white, college campus types and blue-collar labors — than last Saturday’s column on Theresa Check.
The former Central State athlete, an NAIA Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach and CSU’s current athletics director is being nudged out of her job after the holidays by a school administration supposedly looking for a big-time fund raiser to fill its AD job.
I’ve gotten dozens of calls and e-mails about this story. I was stopped in an Oregon District restaurant Wednesday at lunch by a man who grew up in Wilberforce and was saddened by what has happened to Check.
The day before I was stopped in the Mall at Fairfield Commons by a woman whose children had gone to CSU and found a role model in Check
A few of Check’s former players — one now a high school coach with five kids of her own, another working in Michigan — called to express their dismay.
Of course, there also have been as couple of folks — and I’ll be polite here — who I’ll call extremists. They stood on opposites sides of the story and yet both labelled me a racist — though for quite different reasons.
One caller ripped me for going out of my way to be soft on a black university (Central State) and its president (John Garland) — said I should have exposed them and chastised them for their racist actions because Check is white, Because I didn’t, this guy concluded I somehow was against white folks. This guy was nuts on all counts.
As for the other extreme view — from a guy with a 180-degree different stance than the above guy — he blasted me in an e-mail as racist because he thought I was far too harsh on Garland and Central State University and that showed I was against black people.
To the two critics, all I can say is dial it down a couple of notches. Rather than seeing this story in nothing but terms of black and white, look at it as a matter of the right way to treat people.
And before we go any farther here, let me tell you that I like John Garland very much, respect him and think he’s been good for his university. I written that more than once in the newspaper and have said that in talks I’ve given all around the Miami Valley. I just disagree with the university on this decision.
I don’t think you do this to a person who has been loyal to you for a quarter of a century. And Theresa Check has been loyal to CSU. At worst, you reassign them somewhere in the school. She’s a valuable asset and one area college athletics director said his school would hire her “in a heart beat ” if it had an opening.
Truth is, Check has endured some of this once before at CSU. In the mid-1990s, she served briefly as the athletics director while she coached, but then was forced to give up the AD job when the school brought in an Atlanta executive who talked big about all the money he’d raise.
Eleven months later, he was gone. He hadn’t drawn anywhere near the financial backing he’d promised. After that, the school went back to Check, who has held the job up to now,
But one thing will be different this time
This time it looks like the Check-CSU union is over.
And that’s too bad for everyone concerned.
TweetJim Tressel: A Peek Behind The Sweater Vest Facade
COLUMBUS — Ohio State coach Jim Tressel hopes this game turns out a lot better than the first time he met a Les Miles’ team.
“When we were sophomores, we scrimmaged them before the season,” Tressel said of his days in the late 1960s quarterbacking Berea High while Miles played for Elyria. “I had five interceptions that day… I wonder if (Les) got any?
“Back then — ‘68, ‘69 — Elyria and Mentor were both undefeated. I didn’t help (Les) get the championship — my interceptions were in a scrimmage — but still…”
The night of January 7, Tressel’s No. 1 ranked BCS team faces the Miles’ coached and currently-favored Louisiana State University Tigers in New Orleans for the national crown.
Thursday, Ohio State held its media day for the title game and Tressel stood at a Fawcett Center podium and talked for over an hour about everything from “carrying the flag of the Big Ten” into the post-season to the way the (OSU) coaches’ wives involve themselves in a community outreach program at each year’s bowl stop and how New Orleans — parts of which are still ruined thanks to Hurricane Katrina’s deadly siege — would be a perfect place for such a volunteer effort.
The thing I like best about Tressel’s give-and-take sessions with the press is when he gives you those rare peeks behind that sweater vest facade
Sometimes it comes with a comical aside. Other times it’s a shared thought about his Ohio roots or a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at his football program.
Thursday was a busy day for Tressel. In the morning he said he visited a nearby high school. Then at night — after the media session and the day’s practice — he would make home visits to two Buckeye recruits.
He said December and June — with spring football and the weekly (youth) football camps he puts on — are his toughest months.
“I don’t have my Christmas shopping done yet.” he said with a shrug.
When the team is given its holiday break — December 19-26 — Tressel was asked if he’d get some down time as well.
He chuckled as he shook his head: “No, I’ll be honey-doing it up.”
Him taking household assignments from his wife makes for an everyman image you don’t expect. And it contrasts mightily with his towering presence over the OSU program.
Asked if OSU was the ultimate job, he smiled: “When I applied for it, I thought it was. And now it’s exceeded my expectations.”
With rumors circulating that he might be enticed by the NFL, he was asked if coaching the Bucks still was the only job he hoped to have.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
Tressel was asked why Ohio — home of Nebraska’s Bo Pellini, Florida’s Urban Meyer, Bob Stoops at Oklahoma, Illinois’ Ron Zook from Loudonville, Missouri’s Gary Pinkel from Akron — has produced so many top Division I coaches. In fact, six of the top 13 teams in the final BCS poll are led by former Ohioans.
Tressel pointed to the influence of the late Paul Brown — “the first coach to have a playbook,” — and he brought up the state’s two pro teams, the fervor surrounding Friday night high school football here and the 35 colleges playing football in Ohio:
“Culturally, Ohio is very into football.”
As for Tressel himself — winning 73 of 88 games in his seven seasons at OSU, playing for the national title three times, winning four Big Ten crowns, beating Michigan 6 of 7 games — he now has a currency and clout like almost no one in the state.
Thursday, though, he took a moment to set straight a poignant, but incorrect story circulating on the Internet. An e-mail was sent to several writers, including myself. It told how Tressel supposedly bought a $6,000 weight room machine for Tyson Gentry, the Buckeye walk-on paralyzed by a practise-session hit 20 months ago.
The story goes that Tressel saw Gentry working on a certain machine on campus. The injured player said it was his favorite piece of equipment to use — one that helped him feel stronger — but he often had to wait in line to use it.
Out of the blue — a few days after that conversation — a new machine showed up at Gentry’s home.
Tressel said he didn’t buy the machine. It was sent gratis by the manufacturer.
The OSU coach said all he did was mention it to an assistant, asking if he knew who made the machine and if it were possible to get one. The new machine arrived with a note to Gentry saying he’d never have to wait in line to work out again.
“In all the e-mails, I look like a good guy, but it was just the idea that was the good part,” Tressel said. “I’m getting credit for something I didn’t do.”
And that’s understandable.
These days, Tressel seems to throw nothing but completions.
TweetVoting for Some Heisman History
Come Saturday night in New York City, I believe history will be made. And I’ll be glad to have had a little hand in it.
Florida quarterback Tim Tebow almost certainly will become the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy. I voted for him and while that might not sound like much, but it is the first time I — like a lot of the other voters, I’m sure — ever put a second-year college player on the top of my ballot.
For the most part, those of us who vote — media members and former Heisman winners — always have favored the older candidates.
Even though the rules say the award should go to the most outstanding player in the country for that particular season, we figured the younger guys would have another chance at it. Too often we’ve tended to view the selection as something of career award.
I nearly went that way this year and made Hawaii’s quarterback Colt Brennan my top pick. And I think that would have been a legitimate choice.
Brennan’s thrown for 4,174 yards and 38 touchdowns this year — has an NCAA Division 1A record 131 TD tosses for his career — and has led the 12-0 Warriors to the only perfect record in D-1 football and his school’s first-ever BCS bid.
I don’t know if any one player meant more to his team than Brennan did to his. Still I ended up voting him second, in part, because Hawaii’s schedule — especially with the non-conference games factored in — was mediocre at best.
Arkansas running back Darren McFadden may well be the most gifted player in college football. But he played rather ordinarily in three of the Razorbacks’ October games and that made him my third pick.
Tebow, though, had a Heisman year.
He’s the first quarterback ever to reach the 20-20 club in one season. He threw for 29 touchdowns and 3,128 yards, while rushing for 22 touchdowns and a team-high 838 yards. He’s thrown only six interceptions in 317 pass attempts and he’s done most of this in the Southeastern Conference, the best football league in the land this year.
Three years ago in a situation similar to this year’s, I bypassed the dominating younger player— Oklahoma freshman running back, Adrian Peterson — and voted Southern Cal quarterback Matt Leinhart No. 1. He won.
Over the years, a lot of other voters have done it that way, too. There’s been a bias against sophomore or freshman candidates going back to the initial Heisman vote in 1944 when Ohio State senior quarterback, Les Horvath, won the vote over Army’s — more deserving many figured — two sophomore running backs, Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard.
And in the two years that followed — after “waiting their turns” — Blanchard and Davis each did win his Heisman.
Since then, younger players — from Georgia freshman Herschel Walker to San Diego’s sophomore back Marshall Faulk — always were handed supporting roles when a top older player was on the stage.
As for Tebow, he could end up making more history before his college days are done.
A history known only to Archie Griffin.
TweetOSU: Trying to Avoid “Runner-up U”
“Runner-up U.”
That’s what Steve Spurrier called Ohio State before the football season started and now, at the end of the year, it appears his opinion has not changed.
The South Carolina coach put the top-ranked Bucks No. 5 on his final ballot for the USA Today Top 25 Coaches Poll. Only Florida International University’s Mario Cristobal voted them lower — at No. 6 — while two other coaches, Houston’s Art Briles and Frank Beamer of Virginia Tech, had them fourth.
When the Bucks meets Louisiana State in the BCS title game Jan. 7 in New Orleans, they’ll be trying to change the minds of a few of those doubters and, at the same time, make amends after last season’s embarrassing 41-14 collapse against Florida in the national championship game.
OSU came into that game ranked No. 1, but limped out with its eighth straight loss to a Southeastern Conference team in a bowl game.
That why Spurrier seemed almost delighted to tell a reporter earlier this year: “It looks like we’ve officially made Ohio State Runner-up U.”
Last summer, it was John Adams, columnist for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, who worked the same theme of SEC dominance over OSU. He brought up everything from Bear Bryant’s Alabama team clobbering Woody Hayes’ bunch in the 1978 Sugar Bowl to South Carolina’s 2001 and 2002 bowl victories over OSU, the only time in school history the Gamecocks have won consecutive bowl games.
“The SEC is making more money than ever. It’s winning more national championships than ever,” Adams wrote.. “Amidst such success, it’s appropriate the league honor those who have helped it achieve fame and fortune.
“That’s why I’m proposing the conference present a ‘lifetime achievement award’ to a school from another conference that has made a significant contribution to the success of the SEC. And there’s no debating who the first winner should be.
“It’s ‘The Ohio State University.’”
The Bucks — back to the No. 1 spot they held before losing to Illinois last month — already are 5 1/2 point underdogs for the New Orleans game.
In part it’s because LSU ‘s two losses this season each came in triple overtime. And it’s because the Tigers had four victories against teams now voted in the top 25. And, this year, they played in the toughest conference in college football and, finally, because they just won the SEC title game without their starting quarterback.
OSU, on the other hand, is seen by many outside the Buckeye Nation, as a team that was able to benefit not only from the three Ohio cupcakes padding its schedule, but the fact that the Big Ten was weak this year.
Whether the Bucks are the best team in the land is an arguable point, but I can tell you this. While this year’s bunch might not have as many talented stars as last year’s rendition of the Buckeyes, it has something better.
It has a better grasp of the “team concept.” There’s the attitude among players that “we’re all in this together.” And these Bucks are playing with a sense of purpose. Best of all, they have first-hand knowledge about just how wrong things can go when some of that is missing.
Last year OSU came into the game with an unfocused, out-of-shape quarterback. After he won the Heisman, Troy Smith was on the party-plenty circuit and the bowl game could have been an after-thought. It may have been that way with a couple of other players, too, who soon would be off to the NFL.
Throughout this past season that point has been hinted at by a few current players when they discuss what happened in the desert last January. One player insinuated there was even some bad blood between guys committed to the title game last season and those thought to be looking out for themselves first.
Regardless OSU now has a rare opportunity to rewrite its most recent history.
If it does that — if it handles LSU — suddenly OSU will be embraced as the team that has won two national titles in six years.
If it loses, it will wear the mantle of a program that’s lost two title games in a row — both to SEC teams.
And with that would come the Spurrier tag:
“Runner-up U.”
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