Most of the calendar year is spent without college basketball. After a whirlwind of games that stretch from November to March, and a skilled few get to play into April, the offseason is quiet. Sure, there are transfers and commitments, but all of that is off-court competition where most fans only focus on the end product. For seven months, fans count down the days until the next competitive basketball game, and everything else flies under the radar.<\/p>\n
In Columbus, the Ohio State women\u2019s basketball program had a more volatile offseason than most, and it came from the top down with the May 6 OVI arrest of head coach Kevin McGuff.<\/p>\n
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After nearly four months of silence, McGuff spoke with the media on Thursday. The head coach talked about incoming transfers, key departures, and what fans can expect from this year\u2019s edition of the Buckeyes.<\/p>\n
More importantly, McGuff addressed his May 6 arrest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanna address that, unfortunately, I had a terrible incident personally in the spring with an arrest for driving under the influence,\u201d said McGuff. \u201cAnd really, really just horrible situation of which I take very, very seriously, the opportunity to be the head coach at Ohio State and how I represent the university. Most importantly, the young women in our program.\u201d<\/p>\n
In normal circumstances, McGuff is known for brevity with the media. Whether that\u2019s a defensive mechanism for team strategy or general disinterest in talking into a microphone, McGuff was different on Thursday. It was as if he understood the gravity of his actions and the need to address them.<\/p>\n
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When it came to addressing the women on the team, there was a problem \u2013 it was the summer break.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, no one was here at that time, because I\u2019m the type of person that most things like that I would prefer to do in person,\u201d said McGuff. \u201cSince I couldn\u2019t do that with the players, I made sure that I was able to reach each of them individually with a phone call and have a conversation with them about what had happened and kind of how we\u2019re gonna move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the charges went public on May 12, Ohio State announced a transfer and commitment flip signing with Kylie Kitts\u2019 move from Florida and first-year guard Bryn Martin\u2019s decommitment from McGuff\u2019s previous employer at the University of Washington. It did not look, publicly, that Ohio State\u2019s competitive recruiting was impacted, but what was the response from the players themselves? The ones who look to McGuff and his coaching staff for development and support?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have been very supportive, and we\u2019ve been very fortunate here to recruit terrific young women. And I\u2019ve been fortunate to develop, I think, very positive, healthy relationships with them,\u201d said McGuff. And so, they\u2019ve been supportive, and they want somebody that can invest and pour into them. And I think they\u2019ve seen that this summer coming out of that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Also coming out of the OVI situation was a two-week unpaid suspension handed down from Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork. In addition to the forced time away, McGuff reached out to the Wexner Medical Center for support and treatment.<\/p>\n
Legally, the situation is not over yet for the Buckeyes\u2019 program leader. McGuff\u2019s initially scheduled pre-trial session was moved to Oct. 7, at the discretion of his lawyer, whom McGuff praised for his support during the process.<\/p>\n
How do the decisions of McGuff on that day impact both himself, the team, and Ohio State in the long run? That will take time. McGuff understands that some people who support the team do not want to see him coach the team again following a situation that was fortunate to end without anyone being physically hurt on that May 6 night. He supports those people\u2019s rights to have those opinions, but McGuff is looking past that and is now working on how he can grow the team on and off the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanna just kind of reinforce just how fortunate I think I am to be the head coach here and how much I love it here and how appreciative I am of the support that I\u2019ve always gotten from the administration and certainly in a tough time like this,\u201d said McGuff. \u201cAnd just probably even more important than all that is just how much I really, really enjoy coaching the young woman in our program and how much I believe in what we\u2019re doing and how we\u2019re doing it. And just wanna make sure I\u2019m really ready to make sure I can give everything I can to these players, because that\u2019s what they deserve, and I\u2019m looking forward to doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most of the calendar year is spent without college basketball. After a whirlwind of games that stretch from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,5746,217,420,2559,9061,43374,231,772,1544,9060],"class_list":{"0":"post-257015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-buckeyes","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-head-coach","13":"tag-kevin-mcguff","14":"tag-mcguff","15":"tag-ncaa","16":"tag-ncaa-basketball","17":"tag-ncaab","18":"tag-ohio-state"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115112529465642583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}