The No. 3 Ohio State Buckeyes (2-0) struggled early, surged late and then finally held on to secure an 81-74 victory over the seventh ranked Florida Gators (1-1) Tuesday night in Columbus.

William Buford led the Buckeyes by scoring 21 points to go along with six rebounds, three assists and zero turnovers. Jared Sullinger had 16 points, Deshaun Thomas scored 15 and Aaron Craft added 13 points and seven assists for an Ohio State team that has now beaten Florida in back-to-back years.

When the Gators came out and scorched the nets to start the first half, victory didn’t look so certain for the Buckeyes. Florida started the game connecting on five of their first nine 3-pointers, which helped them build a 17-13 lead through nine minutes of play. What was a rowdy pregame crowd for Ohio State had been hushed by the deadly perimeter shooting Florida is capable of.

“Florida stung us early,” Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. “As young as we are, we were constantly making adjustments coming out of timeouts.”

Florida had all the momentum and a five point lead with just under six minutes to play in the half when things turned around for Ohio State. The Buckeyes changed their pace defensively, adjusting nicely to the method Florida uses to run their pick and rolls. Ohio State closed out the first half on a 13-5 run and began the second half with a 7-2 spurt that sent the home crowd into a frenzy.

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Ohio State had the potential game-winning extra point blocked with less than a minute to play in regulation, and then fell to Purdue in overtime 26-23 on Saturday in West Lafayette. The Buckeyes (6-4, 3-3) got behind early once again, failing to hold the lead at any point in the game, and Braxton Miller’s late-game magic ran out after four quarters.

Miller’s scrambling, 4th-down touchdown pass to Jordan Hall in the final minute of play evoked memories of his game-saver against Wisconsin two weeks ago. But Purdue’s Bruce Gaston got up to block Drew Basil’s PAT attempt, giving the Boilermakers new life, and they took advantage of it in the extra session.

The Boilermakers moved the ball with surprising ease before the half against the OSU defense, and despite some effective adjustments by the Buckeyes after halftime, Purdue found a way to score a TD in overtime, ending the game on a quarterback sneak from the 1-yard line after holding Ohio State to a field goal on their overtime possession.

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The Ohio State men’s basketball team kicked off their season with a big win over Wright state Friday night, handling the Raiders 73-42 in front of nearly 16,000 Buckeye fans in Columbus.

Consensus preseason All-American Jared Sullinger battled through constant double teams and scored 19 points to go along with nine rebounds. William Buford chipped in 13 points of his own and Aaron Craft added 10. And while the Buckeyes managed a 31 point victory, Ohio State coach Thad Matta and the players felt like they didn’t play their best basketball.

“I think we could have done better on the offensive end,” Buford said after the game. “Just executing our plays and everything.”

Finding a flow offensively was a challenge for both teams considering the whistle happy officials, who by the end of the game had called 48 fouls total. Thad Matta mentioned in his postgame press conference that it was hard for his team to find a groove when there wasn’t a point in the game where three possessions played out without a foul. For a team looking to build an offensive identity without Jon Diebler’s outside shooting -- the type of game that played out was the last thing they wanted.

“Well, we got in a flow at the free-throw line,” Sullinger joked when talking about the game. But in truth, that’s where the Buckeyes did the most damage. Ohio State scored more than a third of their points (26) at the free throw line on Friday night.

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I noticed something the other night that I’ve never noticed before. I was glued to the ubiquitous Penn State University coverage and The Network was displaying the Penn State athletic logo of the head of a mountain lion. I never noticed the detail. The artwork appears to make the lion’s head turn and look away from the line of the backbone that should have the head facing left, and the face is instead turned to the right. The Penn State athletic logo may be the perfect Rorschach test a mourning nation needs for the young victims this hideous machine, absent of any responsibility, decency, humanity and manhood cultivated and failed.

Full disclosure here; I am a Buckeye fan. I have always looked at the Penn State program as Holier than Thou for no good reason, particularly considering their student-athlete arrest record for the football program between 2002 and 2008. As a grown man whose idealism has long ago been molly-whomped by life’s cynicism, I know better. I know what goes on at every single big time athletic program, and many lesser division programs in both the NCAA and NAIA. Every big time football program has its seedy, dark underbelly. I will also tell you that it doesn’t matter. Sure, before I read the full Grand Jury Report I felt a twinge of comeuppance toward Joe Paterno and the phoniness of his facade he carefully created for about six decades. But  after about one paragraph into the report I felt deeply ashamed that thought even crossed my mind and I started to look in the mirror myself.

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