I truly was blessed this past season and post-season to have had the opportunity to closely cover college basketball’s most decorated player in Ohio State’s Evan Turner. “His Royal Smoothness” as we like to call him, won the Wooden, the Naismith and pretty much every other national college basketball [...]

By Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net
Remember when Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor was being recruited? As far as high school players go, his hype was bigger than Jesus, Jimmy Clausen, and Tim Couch combined. (This analogy is contingent on Jesus’ having played college football, and I’m assuming that’s [...]

Katie Witham, Ohio State reporter for the Big Ten Network, discusses OSU potential with fellow Buckeye expert Paul M. Banks, Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net
(PMB) The Buckeyes have been placed into my regional each of the past 3 weekends, so after spending so much quality time with Thad Matta lately, (this following a season covering [...]

By Paul M. Banks, Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net
As I’ve pointed out before, National Player of the Year Evan Turner is like the Hillary Clinton of college basketball: quite a polarizing figure. Fans of teams eliminated by Turner’s Ohio State Buckeyes HATE him. And as the tournament rolls on, this [...]

Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net Paul M. Banks has an exclusive with Ohio State’s Mark Titus, founder and author of the enormously popular “Club Trillion: Life views from the end of the bench” blog.
Ohio State walk-on Mark Titus created his own blog, “Club Trillion”, whose name refers to his stats in most [...]

By Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net,
INDIANAPOLIS- Big Ten player of the year, and likely national player of the year Evan Turner has become quite the polarizing figure this weekend. The Ohio State swing-man made magical memories for OSU fans on his way to becoming Big Ten tournament [...]

So, the Big Ten previews didn’t finish up due to getting slammed at work.  Therefore, I bring you the preseason Big Ten Power Rankings.
1) Ohio State- Hard to put the Buckeyes anywhere else on the list.  Terrelle Pryor was the most efficient passer in the conference last year and OSU is never lacking talent.  For [...]

For two days the Big Ten football coaches and three players from each team gather in Chicago for Big Ten Media Days.  From what I could tell, this year’s event was pretty bland (are they ever exciting?), but I guess that’s what you get when Lane Kiffin doesn’t coach in your conference.  
So what did we [...]

Day one of the Big Ten Tourney was pretty boring, to put it bluntly.  Minnesota led pretty much the whole way and ended any hopes Northwestern had for their first ever tournament  berth.  Then Michigan jumped out to an early lead and never looked back against Iowa, all but clinching their first tournament appearance in [...]

It’s a little hard to believe, but some of the smaller conference tournaments start this week and teams will be punching their tickets to the Big Dance soon.  Sometimes it’s a little tough to keep track of who’s in and who’s out, so here’s a rundown of how the Big Ten is looking.
In: Michigan State, [...]

Illinois players and fans have been trying to forget a 33-point performance earlier in the week.  Sunday’s game at Ohio State went a long way to pushing that memory out.  The Illini made 8 of their first 9 shots and never allowed the Buckeyes to take a lead.
After being up by five at halftime, it [...]