Columbus, Ohio – Well, it’s not a Michigan-Ohio State football weekend in Columbus, but it’s not bad.
At Nationwide Arena downtown: the first and second rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Purdue, the No. 1 seed in the East, is the most renowned of the eight teams and the only one with a 7-4 center.
Just under four miles north, at the Schottenstein Center on the Ohio State campus: the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. The Buckeyes, seeded third in their region, are the hosts, but Purdue was on the opening card Thursday night against St. John’s and is the only school with both sexes covered here this weekend. One difference between the two: Boilermaker women’s post player Caitlyn Harper is 14 inches shorter than Zach Edey, but so is most of the world.
“I hope we can paint Columbus gold and black,” women’s coach Katie Gearlds said of the Purdues team. “And I hope that starts on Thursday.”
Well, about that. . .
March Madness is scattered here and there across the country this weekend, but Columbus is the only place with both men and women. Even public service announcements on interstate billboards have a basketball theme.
Leave the shots on the field. Drive sober.
Oh, and spring football kicks off for the Buckeyes as they try to find a new quarterback, if you want to know what the locals are like. Really preoccupied by.
Either way, the hosts have their hands full. “Organized chaos is probably the best way to describe it,” Ohio State events manager Ericka Hoon said as she drove from location to location Thursday. “I have a really great staff and luckily we are all back strong since COVID and we are able to divide and conquer.”
By the way, Ohio State is also hosting baseball, lacrosse, volleyball and tennis games this weekend.
“We’re excited to see this happening on opposite days,” Hoon said of the men and women of basketball. When one gender is playing games, the other is practicing. And vice versa. “It’s fun knowing we’re just a few miles apart.” Actually, an eight minute drive.
On the men’s side, the Blue Jackets, owners of the worst record in the NHL, are out of town, so instead of Columbus against the Boston Bruins at Nationwide Arena on Friday, it will be USC against Michigan State. Thursday was practice sessions and USC was first on the clock at 11 a.m., which is pretty early in the morning in California. Again, the Friday tip is just after noon. “I didn’t say any excuses to our players,” coach Andy Enfield said. “It may seem like 9 a.m. (Friday), but we are in March Madness.”
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The pep band was there to welcome the players onto the field. Nothing like a catchy verse Fight to 8 a.m. Pacific Time to get the blood circulating. Additionally, USC will soon join the Big Ten so the Trojans will become better accustomed to playing across time zones. “Actually, someone called us back when we landed Tuesday night, hey, this is going to be normal travel,” Enfield said. “But we’ll get there in a year.”
Later came Purdue practice, preparing for Fairleigh Dickinson. The Boilermakers’ final appearance in the NCAA Tournament is hard to forget. It was 356 days ago, they suffered a historic Sweet 16 loss to a No. 15 seed. “Obviously,” Fairleigh Dickinson guard Grant Singleton said Thursday, “we saw what Saint Peter’s did last year.”
The question is what Purdue players learned from this infamy. “Saint Peter’s played harder than us,” coach Matt Painter said. “That’s what they learned.”
A year later, he still regrets not having seen this problem coming.
“What’s frustrating as a coach is that we played well. . . and obviously advanced to the Sweet 16. There was no red flag. It’s your job as a coach to be able to see certain things because it’s your team and others can’t see from the outside.
“It’s hard to bear, but you keep going, you learn from it and you don’t let it happen again.”
Fairleigh Dickinson arrived in town Wednesday evening after a short bus ride from the First Four in Dayton. Last season, coach Tobin Anderson and his St. Thomas Aquinas team drove their players to tournaments in vans themselves. Things changed in his world, and the excitement of taking a chance against Purdue seeped out of Dayton, when he was filmed in the locker room telling his team that the more he watched the Boilermakers on tape, the more he thought about the Knights. could win.
There’s a coach who just wants his guys to believe. But the cameras were rolling. This was broadcast on Purdue’s social media in about 30 seconds.
“They lost last year to Saint Peter’s in the NCAA tournament, they’re trying to win a national championship, I don’t think they need any extra motivation,” Anderson said. “But I probably gave them a little bit there.
“I told the guys, ‘I’m sorry about that, guys. We will have to save it. We have to play well because I said so.
The day’s practice was capped off by an unusual visitor, Florida Atlantic, set for its first NCAA tournament game in 21 years, against Memphis. One of the surprises of the season, the owls have yet to be fazed by the ever-increasing lights and attention. “Everything changes off the field,” center Vladislav Goldin said. “But everything is the same on the pitch.”
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Shortly after practice ended and four miles down the road, the Purdue and St. John’s women took the field in the First Four. It was the Boilermakers’ first NCAA tournament game in six years, which is a long time for the only Big Ten program to ever win a national championship, and that was 24 years ago.
Gearlds has made returning to the tournament a priority. “I changed the passcode in our locker room to make sure it had something to do with March because we wanted to give ourselves an opportunity,” she said.
Interesting thing about this game. All 10 participants were graduate students or seniors. Purdue had the most fans, many of whom were undoubtedly in Columbus on a dual mission. But St. John’s, after blowing a 15-point lead, won 66-64 on Jayla Everett’s off-balance jumper with 0.3 seconds left. The Red Storm pep band performed New York, New York to celebrate as exhausted — and in Purdue’s case, heartbroken — women left the floor.
The USC and Michigan State men would notify downtown in 15 hours.
