Ohio State women’s and men’s soccer highlight weekend matchups

“The Ohio State women’s soccer team will take a trip to face No. 5 Florida at 7 p.m. on Friday evening, before returning home for a match at 7 p.m. Sunday against Duquesne.”

-Bailey Scheuffler, The Lantern

The Buckeyes have started the 2018 season 0-2, after back-to-back road losses to ranked teams Duke and North Carolina, but the team is ready to turn things around this weekend.

Their first matchup is yet another road test, this time against the Gators, who started the year 2-0 with wins over Washington and Florida Atlantic. Ohio State last faced Florida back in 2015 when the match went into overtime, before the Buckeyes snagged the win, 1-0.

With the team’s home opener set for Sunday evening against Duquesne, the Buckeyes are looking to boost their record with a matchup on their home turf. The Duquesne Dukes are also 0-2 to start the year, falling to Arkansas and Penn State to open their season. The last time OSU and Duquesne faced off was in 2012, with the Buckeyes claiming a 3-0 victory.

Here’s hoping the ladies can get things back on track and exceed their goals heading into the 2018 season.

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“The Ohio State men’s soccer team begins the 2018 regular season by hosting the 13th-annual Bert & Iris Wolstein Classic this weekend where it will take on Furman at 7 p.m. Friday before facing Hofstra at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Bert L & Iris S. Wolstein Field at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium.”

-Ohio State Athletics

First-time head coach Brian Maisonneuve will be making his Buckeye regular season debut on Friday. Previously an associate head coach for Indiana University and former player for the Columbus Crew (1996-2004), Maisonneuve has the chops to be successful in his new position.

He’s got plenty of talented players to develop, that’s for sure. The team returns six starters from last season, and welcomes seven new guys to the squad. The Buckeyes will start the season in the middle of the pack in the preseason Big Ten rankings, tied with Penn State at No. 6 (behind Indiana, Michigan State, Maryland, Michigan and Wisconsin).

The Buckeyes have history on their side, with a 19-12-1 all-time record in their early season home tournament, and have won the tournament title six times (2006-2009, 2011, 2012). The team is also 112-47-27 at home in Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium since 1999.

Live stats for the matchups will be available on OhioStateBuckeyes.com and the games will also be streamed live on BTN Plus (with a paid subscription). And for folks in Columbus, all men’s soccer home games are FREE, so go support your Buckeyes!

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“Out of all the coaches, he was the one that was a little bit different than everybody else... I just felt like sometimes, like he wanted to be a player’s coach too much. You just never know what’s going on inside somebody else’s house.”

-Ryan Shazier via David Wertheim, Eleven Warriors

At this point, Ohio State’s Board of Trustees, along with university president Michael V. Drake, have ended their investigation into Urban Meyer and Gene Smith and a three-game suspension was handed to the football head coach.

We’ve heard from media members— local and national— fans far and wide, and just about everyone else even remotely aware of the situation. But, it Buckeye legend Ryan Shazier was recently on the “Inside the Green Room” podcast hosted by NBA player Danny Green and Harrison Sanford, and had some insight into the situation — specifically into Zach Smith.

Shazier went on to say that he thinks that Urban Meyer will return to the team, and everything will be fine. Ultimately, he’s glad that the head coach didn’t end up losing his job, and doesn’t think any on-field performances will dip in his absence.

The linebacker wasn’t the only Buckeye to jump on the “Inside the Green Room” podcast either, with alumni and analyst Matt Finkes also giving his opinion on the matter.

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Buckeye bits from the NFL

There was only one preseason game on Thursday, but one Buckeye made his presence known, and another was sidelined early on. The Cleveland Browns ended up beating the reigning Super Bowl Champions 5-0.

After spending his first four years in the league with the San Francisco 49ers, running back Carlos Hyde signed with the Browns during the offseason, and is expected to be one of the team’s featured backs. In Thursday’s game, ‘El Guapo’ had seven carries for 45 yards, including one big 33-yard run.

It wasn’t all good for Buckeyes up north though, rookie — and No. 4 overall draft pick — Denzel Ward went down early on with an apparent back injury. Here’s what Michael Hoag from the SB Nation Brown’s site Dawgs by Nature had to say:

“Rookie corner Denzel Ward was down on the grass for five minutes, helped off the field, and sent back to the locker room for testing on an apparent back injury. Coach Hue Jackson said he’ll have an MRI on his back to determine the severity of the injury, but it did not look good, at all. It’s possible Ward was held out as a precaution, but that’s wishful thinking until we hear anything back from his test.”

Another Buckeye who has worked his tail off to get back from an injury is Miami LB Raekwon McMillan. After tearing his ACL in the first preseason game of his rookie season, the Buckeye is back and looks to be better than ever — on and off the field.

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STICK TO SPORTS

• I hate to break it to you, but if you played as Oddjob in ‘GoldenEye’, you were cheating.
• A lot of classic movies — like, ‘The Breakfast Club’ and ‘Scarface’ — are coming to Netflix in September!
• SB Nation put out a list of some great sales this weekend on college football gear.