OSU Buckeyes

This is Across The Field, a regular feature on BuckeyeNation where we point you to noteworthy Buckeyes coverage here and elsewhere. Think something should be included? Send it to espnkendrick@gmail.com.

BuckeyeNation Week in Review

• The Buckeyes picked up their eighth pledge in the class in wide receiver Lonnie Johnson of Gary, Ind., who wants to help recruit.
• Michael Bennett is healthy and ready to be a big contributor on the defensive front, writes Austin Ward.
• The tight end position requires more athleticism than ever, and the Buckeyes feel good about their group.
• Brad Bournival is on the road scoping out talent, which he runs down in Tales From The Road each Wednesday.
• Former Texas commit Demetrius Knox is going to make his official visit for the Penn State game in October.
• Bournival put the spotlight on DT pledge Dylan Thompson and LB/DE pledge Sam Hubbard.
• Bournival updated his list of the top five offensive linemen and top five defensive tackles.
• TE Mavin Saunders of Houston got an Ohio State offer and is excited about it.
• Mitch Sherman caught up with Deshaun Watson, who looks solid to Clemson. But will he feel the pull elsewhere at some point?
• OSU commit Parris Campbell Jr. is a running back for now, but is open to a position switch if it will get him on the field faster.
• A 2015 athlete from Denmark, via Warren (Ohio) Harding, got an Ohio State offer.
• Travis Haney ranked the nation's most talented teams (Ohio State is a top-10 choice) and looked at the make-or-break chances of Braxton Miller.
• CB Jabrill Peppers is set for an announcement a week from today on ESPNU. Don't hold your breath, Buckeyes fans.
• Demarre Kitt is going to announce on June 10. A little better chance there, but it doesn't feel like Ohio State is the favorite.
• The 2014 schedule was released, and Adam Rittenberg wrote about how the new 14-team Big Ten schedule came together.
• The Big Ten bowl lineup for 2014 and beyond is taking shape.
• Former OSU running back Maurice Clarett wants to try his hand at rugby.
• Ward chatted with fans for an hour, as he does each Thursday.
• Bournival's mailbag covers juco linemen, five-star recruits and which OSU pledges could jump in the next batch of rankings.

Football

• Ohio State is among the schools trying to keep up with the escalating salaries for assistant coaches. (Dispatch)
• AD Gene Smith supports having the Big Ten title game in Detroit, in an indoor facility. (Detroit Free Press)
• WR Jeff Greene, who is transferring to Ohio State as a walk-on, is an intriguing prospect. (Eleven Warriors)
• RIP to former OSU fullback Barry Walker, who died at age 49 of pancreatic cancer. He was a starter on a Rose Bowl team. (Lancaster Eagle Gazette)
• Land Grant Holy Land has some fun with Ohio State's "corpse flower."
• And Ohio State is hosting its second women's football clinic on June 8. (OSU)

Basketball

• With two early second-round picks, Deshaun Thomas could be on the board for the Cleveland Cavaliers, writes Bob Finnan. (News-Herald)
• Don't worry too much about the future of St. John Arena, at least for the next decade or so, writes Bob Hunter. (Dispatch)
• Former Buckeyes coach Randy Ayers is being inducted into the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame. (Dispatch)
• Ohio State will only play Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin once each in basketball next season. (Dispatch)

The Gang's All Here

• Ohio State is taking a high-profile stand against homophobia in its athletic department. (Toledo Blade)
• OSU tennis player Peter Kobelt has a 135 mph serve and some big national goals. (Dispatch)
• The Buckeyes hired a women's tennis coach. (OSU)
• Ohio State, a lacrosse school? Hey, why not? (Eleven Warriors)
• But it didn't work out on Saturday against Cornell in the national quarterfinals.

The Big Ten released its 2014 league schedule earlier Thursday, completing what its architect Mark Rudner called a "long, arduous process" of crafting a slate with two new teams, two new divisions and a second open week.

ESPN.com caught up with Rudner, the Big Ten's senior associate commissioner for television administration, to discuss how the 2014 schedule came together.

It's important to note the Big Ten compiled the 2014 slate based upon principles green-lighted by its athletic directors.

They are:

• Nonconference games that had been previously contracted were protected. For example, Northwestern visits Notre Dame on Nov. 15, 2014, so the Big Ten made sure not to schedule the Wildcats on that day. Also, Penn State and Rutgers had a previously scheduled non-league game for Sept. 13, 2014, which became a conference game with Rutgers joining the Big Ten. The date wasn't changed.
• No more than two consecutive road games
• Each team must play two home games and two road games in each half of the season

It's not as if athletic directors ask the league not to schedule multiple rivalry games on the road every year.

"Once you do that," Rudner said, "you're at risk of never having a schedule."

There has been some reaction to Michigan facing in-state rival Michigan State in road games in consecutive seasons (2013, 2014) and Purdue visiting Indiana for the Bucket game the same two years. The Wolverines never have played the Spartans in East Lansing in back-to-back years and haven't hosted MSU in consecutive years since 1967-68.

Although it'll be new for Michigan, such back-to-backs are fairly common when a scheduling model changes. Between 2010-11, there were 13 instances of back-to-back matchups, including rivalry games like Iowa-Minnesota (both games in Minneapolis) and Penn State-Ohio State (both games in Columbus) and other good matchups like Wisconsin-Michigan State (both games in East Lansing).

"It's unavoidable," Rudner said. "It happened five times in 2008-2009. So it's not foreign, it's not ideal, but it's unavoidable. When you're introducing new institutions and you dole out home and road games, it just happens."

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has said "parity-based scheduling," where teams will face one another more often in crossovers based on historical success,will begin in 2016, will begin once the league goes to a nine-game conference schedule. Rudner said the league asked the ADs if they wanted to start the nine-game schedules in 2014 but they couldn't because of so many signed contracts for non-conference games. If they had, the 2014 would have incorporated parity scheduling.

The 2014 slate ultimately features none of it, as the traditional powers in each division -- Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State in the East, and Nebraska, Wisconsin and Iowa in the West -- don't play at all.

"I don't think it's going to hurt us," Rudner said. "Brand is strong enough. There are enough games that are strong that'll drive television interest. Short of a full round-robin, which nobody in our conference wanted to do, you're going to have these sort of issues."

A few other schedule notes:

• Rudner and his staff didn't have a directive to schedule mostly division games in November, but it worked out that way as most teams will play exclusively in their division or play only one crossover in the season's decisive month. "Ideally, that's what we would like to do," Rudner said. "It makes a lot of sense to play division games late in the season, toward a championship."
• The Big Ten doesn't look at long-term trends of how often teams open league play on the road when crafting schedules. Athletic directors haven't asked it to a be a principle of building schedules. "It's never been important to them," Rudner said. "What they want to avoid is long road trips and making sure there's balance, home and away, in each half of the season. The rest of it, they can live with. Not everybody plays the same kind of schedule, but they do it based on those principles. They look at it and say, 'That's fair. Let's do it.'" Penn State, by the way, will open league play on the road for the fifth straight year and for the ninth time in the past 11 seasons.
• That new members Maryland and Rutgers host traditional powers Ohio State and Michigan on the same day (Oct. 4) was pure coincidence, Rudner said.

The 2015 Big Ten schedule, which should be released by the end of the month, will feature the same matchups at the opposite locations. The league has to maneuver around some previously scheduled non-league games before finalizing the slate.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Big Ten is making sure Ohio State gets to know its new neighbors, and it's not wasting any time with the introductions.

When Maryland and Rutgers officially debut as members of the conference and co-tenants in the freshly created East Division next year, the Buckeyes will meet both before facing any of their old friends from the league as part of the 2014 schedule that was unveiled by the Big Ten and the program on Thursday.

Ohio State will open its conference slate with a road trip to face the Terrapins on Oct. 4, and following a bye week, it will play host to Rutgers on Oct. 18 before turning its attention back to more traditional rivals. Among that group, Michigan State will be back on the docket after the teams miss out on a matchup in 2013, with the new division mates set to resume their series in East Lansing, Mich., on Nov. 8.

Aside from the annual meeting with Michigan at the end of the regular season, the Buckeyes will also host Indiana and Illinois. Additional road trips for Ohio State in the league will include visits to Minnesota and Penn State.

A complete look at the complete 2014 schedule for the Buckeyes:

Aug. 30: at Navy (at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium)
Sept. 6: Bye
Sept. 13: Kent State
Sept. 20: Virginia Tech
Sept. 27: Cincinnati
Oct. 4: at Maryland
Oct. 11: Bye
Oct. 18: Rutgers
Oct. 25: at Penn State
Nov. 1: Illinois
Nov. 8: at Michigan State
Nov. 15: at Minnesota
Nov. 22: Indiana
Nov. 29: Michigan

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- There wasn’t much question about talent.

Ohio State perhaps wasn’t even too concerned about finding Michael Bennett a position.

The Buckeyes didn’t really need much evaluation of his technique, didn’t have to figure out if the junior understood his assignments or see how well he interacted with teammates as a potential leader for a rebuilt defensive line.

All they needed to see was Bennett healthy throughout the spring, ready to provide the type of production that was expected of him a year ago before nagging injuries largely robbed him of the chance in what amounted to a lost season.

“That was not what I wanted,” Bennett said during spring practice. “But, I mean, you can’t dwell on the negative things that happened to you. You’ve got to keep trying to push forward and just weather the storm.”

The Buckeyes survived the rough patch just fine a year ago, when the versatile Bennett wasn’t available. Even when he returned from a groin issue that he never appeared to truly shake, they kept chugging along to a perfect record thanks to the steady group of veterans on hand.

Bennett was supposed to be an integral part of the unit a year ago, bringing enough size at 6-foot-3, 285 pounds to push for playing time on the inside while adding the kind of athleticism needed to rush the passer on the edge. He left spring practice a year ago technically listed as a backup to defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins, but the praise for his skills came from the very top of the program, with Urban Meyer making it clear that Bennett was one of the “four best” linemen heading into the offseason.

Had Bennett stayed healthy and remained on that path, the Buckeyes might not be looking at replacing all four starters. Had Bennett not struggled to get back on the practice field or return to full strength, his numbers surely would have looked a bit different than the 11 tackles, one sack, one forced fumble and one recovery that he recorded in eight games.

But Bennett is the first to admit there’s nothing he can do to change that now. And after 15 complete workouts, there’s also even less reason for the Buckeyes to dwell on it.

“Michael had a good spring,” Ohio State defensive line coach Mike Vrabel said. “It was consistent, he was there every day, he didn’t miss any time with bumps and bruises, which is something that he’s done in the past. He hadn’t been able to string a whole bunch of practices together, Michael did that and he was a leader for us. He was a physical presence for us inside, his understanding was very high with what he was being asked to do.

“I think Michael Bennett -- by being out there and being consistent, his message and his toughness and his play -- helps with leadership. To me, leadership is about being consistent in your message and demanding it from other players. But first and foremost, you have to do it yourself, and he did.”

The next step will be doing it throughout the grind of a season, and the task doesn’t get any easier when Bennett’s new position is taken into account.

The Buckeyes are now more settled on the edge thanks to rising sophomores Noah Spence and Adolphus Washington, leaving little need for Bennett to prove he can be as effective outside as inside. But there’s an enormous hole to fill at three-technique thanks to Hankins’ decision to skip his senior season and turn pro, and if nothing else, having one spot to consistently line up at will make it easier to make sure Bennett is on the field and back in the rotation.

“We need Michael Bennett, we do,” Vrabel said. “Michael Bennett needs some confidence in himself, and he’s gaining it. Michael has also got to stay healthy.

“He understands he’s got to stay healthy, he’s got to take care of his body. It’s not easy in there, but we expect him to do that.”

Bennett met that standard throughout spring. The Buckeyes could certainly use a repeat in the fall.