Let's Get Experimental

Tipoff

The NBA has developed a lexicon of its own to describe its players and prospects. There are “3-and-D” wings that can defend multiple positions and shoot the ball. There are unicorns, playmaking forwards, and high-volume shooters. Players move at the trade deadline to fit into new situations. There is a uniformity of style in the NBA. They play the game at the highest level, but it all kind of looks the same from team to team. Get the ball to the best player and let them score and make plays for teammates. College basketball is where things get weird.

Jordan Sperber, a YouTuber and college basketball newsletter writer (My competitor? Nah, you should read his work, too!), better known by his Hoop Vision pseudonym, recently took a look at the team that doesn’t dribble the ball, the Bellarmine Knights:

To me, this is one of the great things about college basketball. On any given night, your favorite team might face off against Scott Davenport and his “pressing on offense” or the Princeton Offense, Jim Boeheim’s famed 2-3 zone, or Tony Bennett’s blocker-mover offense and pack-line defense. The stylistic differences from team to team lead to true chaos during the non-conference schedule and again in March. NBA coaches have in-depth scouting reports on the other 29 teams that you play at minimum 4 times each season. Come tournament time, college coaches are lucky to scrabble together a few hours of tape and 36 hours to prepare for the next opponent. College basketball is the cutting edge of the sport, where the newest ideas are tested and new concepts give innovative coaches an edge.

The Mixtape 

The Field of 68 team puts out lots of great content each week. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

• The big news in college basketball on Tuesday morning was the report that Coach K’s grandson and Duke walk-on Michael Savarino and freshman phenom Paolo Banchero were charged with driving while intoxicated-related charges early Sunday morning. Savarino was driving Banchero’s car, who was sitting in the rear seat and was charged with aiding and abetting. Banchero played on Tuesday night against Gardner-Webb. On Field of 68 After Dark, Archie and Sean Miller joined Jeff Goodman to discuss the situation and whether it was the right decision for Banchero to play on Tuesday.

• Let’s give some love to the middle-sized guys! Field of 68 is excited to debut its Mid-Major Top 25 with ‘Mr. Mid-Major” himself, Sean Paul, and former Quinnipiac player and All Facts Media co-owner Aaron Robinson. I might have just named Sean “Mr. Mid-Major” just now. Who knows? At any rate, this is going to be a recurring podcast for Field of 68 and a great way to stay in touch with some of those unique programs that fly under the radar when a player on a blue blood program gets arrested. Paul and Robinson go through their top teams from outside the power conferences not named Gonzaga.

• We have another new podcast! On this episode of Drive the Lane with Andrew Zoldan and Joey Lane, Ohio State senior forward Kyle Young logged in to talk about the big win over Bowling Green on Monday night. Young and Lane were former teammates in Columbus and talked about Young’s big put-back dunk on Monday. For more on the Buckeyes, check out my interview with Joey in Four Point Play below.

The Field of 12

The college football season is in high gear and the Field of 12 is on the scene. Here is a brief sample of the new network from the makers of Field of 68.

• Field of 12 After Dark | Michigan is PLAYOFF BOUND! "The biggest win Jim Harbaugh's had since he's been there!"

• Ted & Yogi’s Pac-12 Adventure | Head To Head vs. Body of Work & Staff Changes Around the PAC 12

• The Trevor & Bryce Show | UNDEFEATED & UNRANKED??? What more can the Sooners do to earn a CFP Spot?!

Four Point Play

Each newsletter throughout the summer, we’ll check in with one of our podcast hosts and see what they’re up to besides producing compelling content for us at The Field of 68.

This week, we checked in with Joey Lane, co-host of the Drive the Lane podcast (Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you access podcasts) and former Ohio State men’s basketball team walk-on.

1. Let’s start with your background. You were a walk-on for the Ohio State men’s basketball team from 2015 through 2019, playing under both Thad Matta and current head coach Chris Holtmann. Why did you decide to be a walk-on and what led you to the wonderful world of podcasting?

• The origin story of Joey Lane at Ohio State is that I didn’t have any desire to be a walk-on. I wanted to be “wanted” at a great school with great academics. I was a good high school player with offers from D-III and D-II schools. I went to Ohio State for a summer event. I went there with my high school team from the Chicago area. We were playing some really good schools on the second day. The coaches were watching me and we ended up winning the camp championship. After the last game, my high school coach pulled me aside and said a coach from Ohio State wanted to meet with me. Long story short, I stayed in touch with the coach and let him know Ohio State was my dream school. After they offered me a spot on the team as a walk-on, it was an offer I had to take. I was fortunate to walk on as a freshman and then got a scholarship my second year. To answer the second part, I always want to be connected with Ohio State. I wanted to start a podcast after my co-host brought the idea up to me. There are a lot of untold stories that you can’t tell when you are a player. I can talk from the players’ side, giving my unique side on the podcast, telling my side of the story and untold stories from the locker room. Ohio State fans have let me know they wanted something like this every week, not just the first three we put out, for Ohio State basketball and football, too. Now as I progress in my “real” job, the podcast is a perfect way to stay in sports and stay connected to Ohio State, which is what I would do anyway.

1. What was it like playing for Coach Holtmann those first two years and what do you see now that has changed about this team under his leadership and with the players he recruited?

• I had a unique perspective under the old situation. What a lot of people don’t know is that I wasn’t on campus during that moment. I was at home recovering from surgery. That all hit me like a truck as you might imagine. Months earlier, our AD said that Coach Matta was ‘our guy’ after losing to Rutgers in the Big Ten tournament. Any time the AD has to publicly defend the coach, that’s a sign. As a walk-on, you don’t know what the new coach is going to say, or if I was going to be on the team at all. The team was turned on its head and only 6 players remained. Those 6 guys had a number of great players, like Keita Bates-Diop. The change was for the better, looking back on it. The staff brought in a jolt of energy. They were younger. They brought in a new strength and conditioning program. There are guys like Andrew Dakitch and Keita Bates-Diop who were given opportunities they never had. We were all on the same page of wanting to bring the program back to relevance. Coach Holtmann had meetings with all the players and made it known that they were all about the team and doing what it took to be successful. Hearing new voices say that was very reassuring. The coaching style was not very different. Both are defensive-oriented guys, very positive people. The relationship I had with both guys went way beyond basketball. I am a huge fan of both of them. The energy that Coach Holtmann brought in was huge. He had all that success at Butler, in the early years at Ohio State, and even at Gardner-Webb before that. Now he is able to bring in top recruiting classes and has all his guys. We were competing at the highest level. Number 1, the players genuinely love each other. They also play really hard. You can see when guys are not playing hard. This staff, [not playing hard] is a non-negotiable. It is really apparent and fun to watch.

1. The Buckeyes had a bit of a rough go of it the first couple of games, needing a late bucket from Zed Key to overcome Akron and then a fairly close game against Niagara before dispatching of Bowling Green, 89-58, on Monday night. The schedule is about to get a lot tougher with games against Xavier, Seton Hall, a potential game against Florida in the Fort Meyers Tipoff, and then the big one, Duke in Columbus in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. What does tOSU need to do to compete against the better teams on the schedule?

• Simply put, they need better guard play. In college basketball, guards win you the big games. You look at Trayce Jackson-Davis and Kofi Cockburn, they are incredible players. But in basketball, big men cannot put their teams on their back and win. After the game [against Niagara], the guards did play better. Justice Sueing, he’s been a shell of himself coming back from injury, a guy that plays 1-4, a jack-of-all-trades. They need a scoring punch. That’s the biggest piece of the puzzle. We have to have a bigger scoring punch. A guy like Jamari Wheeler, he has never been a big scoring threat, but he’s a good defender. Freshman Malachi Branham was really great down the stretch vs. Akron but was not as good against Niagara. Duane Washington, Jr. was a big-time scorer, but he’s not on the team anymore. One of the reasons Ohio State is winning games right now is because they have one of the best frontcourts in the country with EJ Liddell, Zed Key. Guys like Joey Brunk would start for more than half the teams in the country but is coming off the bench. Guard play is the thing that worries me the most about this team. Meechie Johnson plays really hard and is incredibly talented. I have faith they are going to figure it out.

And one!

1. As a native of Chicago’s North Shore suburbs, you must surely be familiar with the filmography of John Hughes, including such classics as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Home Alone, and Sixteen Candles. The final scene of The Breakfast Club, for example, was filmed at Deerfield High School, your alma mater. You can have one John Hughes character as a teammate in basketball. Who is it and why?

• First of all, let me just say that I’m not the biggest movie guy. I have seen all those movies because that’s where I am from. Ferris Bueller as a teammate would be very fun to win with for after the games, going out on the town. For example, when we beat Michigan State my junior year when they were number 1, Ferris Bueller would have been an incredibly fun guy. Having the kid from Home Alone, Kevin McCallister, would anyone have a higher basketball IQ than him? He would be a great guard, know where all the guys would be on the court, he would know time and score, he would talk to Coach Holtmann about the situation. I’d go with him.

Stay tuned for upcoming episodes of the Drive the Lane! podcast with Joey Lane and Adnrew Zoldan. Upcoming guests include a lot of the current Ohio State players. This week, we’ll interview Kyle Young. Be on the lookout for Jared Sullinger, Greg Oden, and John Diebler in future episodes

Wednesday Superlatives

Each week, we will shine a light on a team and an individual player that has captured the hearts - or at least the attention - of the world of college basketball.

• Team of the Week: Duke

  • Have you heard that Coach K is going to retire at the end of the season? It’s true! Tune in to any Duke game this year, or probably any other game being played, and they might mention this news. It’s a big year for the Duke Blue Devils and they announced their presence on November 9th with an impressive 79-71 victory over Kentucky in the Champions Classic. This superlative is a co-shoutout to Kentucky, Kansas, and UCLA three of the bluest of blue bloods, for showing out and proving that the blue bloods (other than UCLA, who made it to the Final Four last season) won’t be down this year.

• Player of the Week: Drew Timme

  • Speaking of familiar faces, All-American Drew Timme, the 6’10” forward from Texas, was a bull in a china shop against the Longhorns on Saturday, scoring a career-high 37 points against Texas. Due to injuries and matchups, Texas Head Coach Chris Beard elected to go small against the big Bulldogs frontline. Timme made them pay, diving to the rim again and again for easy baskets. He followed each with a signature twirl of his mustache or arm flex. Good on him, I say. College basketball needs a villain, even if that villain plays for the team that everyone thinks of when they hear the word “Cinderella.”

Around the Rim

This section highlights some of the best writing on college basketball to hit the web. Consider these your extra credit assignments for fall semester.

• Heat Check MBB | Bracketology: 10 teams with pivotal nonconference schedules to monitor

• Making the Madness | Fraud Power Rankings Week 1

• Busting Brackets | NCAA Basketball: 10 biggest takeaways from opening week of 2021-22 season