Tim O'Shea will not be making a return trip to Athens after all.
The former Ohio coach, who left for Bryant in June, ironically had scheduled the Bulldogs as part of an early season tournament, but new coach John Groce opted to remove that game from the schedule in favor of William and Mary on Nov. 16.
Groce called the removal of Bryant a mutual decision by both teams.
I just felt like for us and for what we were trying to do in a perfect world
if we were going to avoid that opening weekend and play someone who had Division I status that could potentially be better for us with this particular schedule in this particular weekend Groce said.
Other additions to the schedule from the one previously obtained by The Post in June include a Nov. 22 game at Austin Peay and Dec. 2 game at home versus Tulsa.
The Bobcats will play a stretch of six games in 10 days at the beginning of December, with five of those games on the road. Included in that stretch is the Marques Maybin NABC Classic against Lamar Dec. 6, Louisville Dec. 7 and Indiana State Dec. 8.
I think that stretch is going to teach us a lot about our basketball team
Groce said. I think most importantly that it will help prepare us for the grind of MAC play.
Although Groce did not have much of a say with this season's non-conference slate, he did say it would give a relatively young Ohio team plenty of challenges.
In terms of non-conference schedules go
I think the body of it is right up there
in terms of placement of games especially
and stretches of road games in terms of difficulty about as difficult as most teams will play
quite honestly
he said.
Summer awards
Ohio baseball players Brandon Besl, Hayden Johnston, Adam Goodpasture and Robert Maddox III also were named to the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League all-league team.
Besl, who played first base for the Cincinnati Steam, made the GLSCL first team hitting .289 with four home runs and 30 RBIs.
Goodpasture, a reliever for the Grand Lake Mariners and second-team selection, had 15 relief appearances over 24.2 innings and allowed only one run, good for a 0.36 earned run average. He also had a 2-1 record with two saves.
Johnston played for the Columbus All-Americans and hit .297 with 23 RBIs. Maddox also played for Columbus, recording a .301 average with 20 runs scored. Both earned second-team accolades.-
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