“Of the more than 1,200 deals submitted to the clearinghouse so far, about one-third have been approved — many of them with little to no issue, those with knowledge tell Yahoo Sports. About 80 have been denied and are likely, if they haven’t already, to be resubmitted (deals can be resubmitted once).”

There is an alternative interpretation of the statement: Of the 1200 submissions, they have approved 400 and denied 80, and 720 or so are still being worked on. Those 80 cases have one more shot to resubmit before going to arbitration. Interpreted that way, the clearinghouse is quite lenient.

These last few seasons have been quite uneven at Ohio State though there’s hope that Jake Diebler can actually take this team back into Big Ten contention. He took over as interim head coach in February 2024 and led a brilliant push which led him to getting the full-time job a few weeks later. Last season was largely underwhelming, with a 10th place conference finish and a record only a hair above .500, though Diebler and company are hoping to learn from that experience.

First comes the good news, and this is news that’s rare in this era of college basketball. The Buckeyes return arguably their top three players from last season, each of whom averaged at least 13 points per game in freshman John Mobley, sophomore Devin Royal, and junior Bruce Thornton. Where things went wrong last season was largely in that frontcourt, as highly-touted talents Aaron Bradshaw and Sean Stewart didn’t pan out and went back into the transfer portal.

Ohio State’s own transfer class this season doesn’t exactly jump off the page but Diebler and staff gained four pretty solid athletes for next year. The backcourt gets a notable boost with Gabe Cupps, the former Indiana point guard looking for his chance after limited minutes in Bloomington. Former Wright State forward Brandon Noel could carve out a decent role in the frontcourt while Josh Ojianwuna is a highly-regarded big man that started to come into his own at Baylor last season.

Keeping in mind those centers that didn’t work out last season, it’s ever more important how Christoph Tilly fits in with these Buckeyes. A 7-footer from Germany, Tilly just spent three years out at Santa Clara developing into a reliable paint presence. He’s fresh off a junior year where he put up 12.5 points and 4.9 rebounds a game with his most consistent production, starting 31 games in a nice year for the Broncos.

The question becomes how this 7-0 talent can continue to grow his game in the Big Ten. He has the size and ability to be a potent weapon on both ends of the court and fills an enormous hole for the Buckeyes. Ohio State already knows what they have in a backcourt led by Mobley and Thornton, but this frontcourt is full of question marks. A stable senior season with even more growth out of Tilly would go a long way to shoring up a recent problem for the Buckeyes.

Last year Ohio State still won 17 games with those returning three stars carrying much of the load. If they can play to that same level or better and get legitimate play in the paint from Tilly then Ohio State can be a contender in this conference again. Diebler’s work this season to grab talent didn’t just stop at Tilly either, with Ojianwuna more than capable as well, but will the results be any different this season?

MUNCIE, Ind. – – Ball State Athletics is thrilled to unveil the first renderings of the new clubhouse facilities for its softball program, following approval by the Ball State University Board of Trustees on May 2.
 
The $8.8 million project, designed by MSA Design, will bring state-of-the-art facilities to the Ball State Softball Stadium. Construction is expected to begin in Fall 2025 and be completed by Summer 2026.

 

“It’s an exciting time to be a Cardinal,” Head Softball Coach Helen Peña said. “The athletic department and university continue to raise the bar in supporting our student-athletes. I’m incredibly grateful and thrilled about this project and the impact it will have on both our current team and future generations of Ball State softball.”

 

The softball clubhouse will span approximately 6,000 gross square feet and will be located adjacent to the program’s home dugout. Designed with student-athlete experience in mind, the new facilities will include fueling stations, team lounges, study spaces and other key amenities.

 

“Our new clubhouse will enhance the daily experience of our student-athletes,” Peña added. “From nutrition and recovery to academics and team bonding, this facility will be a difference-maker. It’s also a powerful recruiting tool, as the best clubhouse in the MAC, while we continue to build a championship-caliber program. The best is yet to come. Chirp Chirp!”

 

In addition to the clubhouse project, the Ball State Softball Stadium is currently receiving a new turf field as part of a broader facilities enhancement initiative. This follows the recent resurfacing of the football field at Scheumann Stadium and the basketball court at Worthen Arena and is in conjunction with the turf resurfacing at Shebek Stadium.

 

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FRISCO, Texas – In prior years, when a college football coach went on vacation in July, he had a pretty good idea who most of his starters were before the start of preseason camp.

Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said today at Big 12 Media Days that he might be able to name eight of his 22 starters, which is considerably more than West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez knows right now.

“I might not know five,” Rodriguez says, “but I feel like we’ve got a dozen or so guys I think we can win with, so that’s a good thing.”

Currently, Rodriguez is welcoming 74 new players this season, which represents about 70% of his football team. 

He admits that part can be pretty unnerving.

“I think it’s good because we lost a lot of seniors and we needed a whole new group of replacements, but at the same time the unknowns make you nervous,” he said. “It’s kind of like, ‘Well, this is what we’re going to feature on offense, and this is what we are going to do on defense,’ but we’ve still got to figure out what we do well. This August is going to be the most important time, not only figuring out who we got, but what we can do with them.”

When you factor in an entirely new football staff, those 30 days beginning on Wednesday, July 30, until Friday, Aug. 29 – a day before the season opener against Robert Morris, are going to be vitally important for the Mountaineers.

A lot of the coaches on Rodriguez’s staff have worked together before in some capacity, but not as a full group, so there are lots of moving parts he must address.

“We’ve got a plan. I’m not worried about it. I’m actually kind of looking forward to it, and usually the most enjoyable (aspect of coaching) is putting it all together that first year,” he explained.

Rodriguez said he liked what his team accomplished in June up through the July 4th break, and with roughly three weeks left before camp begins, he believes his players are embracing what is being asked of them.

The veteran coach spent this past spring reluctant to single out individual players, and he continues to be vague in terms of what they can do. That’s because he simply doesn’t know enough about them yet.

“Until we go against each other a little bit and play somebody else, I don’t really have anything to compare them to,” Rodriguez pointed out. “Until we play a game, it’s still going to be figuring out what we’ve got.”

And that includes Preseason All-Big 12 running back Jahiem White, who was limited for most of spring practice.  

Can White run the football more than 200 times in a season like some of Rodriguez’s most productive feature backs have in the past?

Avon Cobourne carried the football 335 times at West Virginia in 2002. A year later, Quincy Wilson got 282 carries, and Steve Slaton ran the ball 248 times for the Mountaineers in 2006. When he was at Arizona, Rodriguez gave Ka’Deem Carey the football 349 times in 2013, and Tre Stewart had 278 rushes last year at Jacksonville State.

Even quarterback Denard Robinson ran the ball 256 times for Rodriguez at Michigan in 2010.

White got 109 carries two years ago and 148 last year in Neal Brown’s offense.

It will probably take Rodriguez a couple weeks of practice in August to know if the junior is capable of handling that many carries.

Rodriguez has run the gamut, from small college football at Glenville State to major college football at Michigan. In between have been head coaching stops at West Virginia, Arizona and Jacksonville State. He says his formula has always been to find the best players that he can get, whether that’s transfer portal, junior college or high school guys.

“Ideally, you’d like for them to have three or four years so you can build them in your program. This past year, we had to get what we could get,” he said. “Next year, we will have a lot more high school guys than transfer guys, and that will probably be the formula going forward. I’m not trying to overthink it because we’re never going to turn down a great player.”

In the order of things that needs to be establish, acquiring talent is always No. 1, but conditioning and toughness are two aspects the coaching staff can establish right away. The toughness and “hard-edge” play that Rodriguez talks about must be unique to West Virginia and something that sets his program apart from the other teams on its schedule.

There were many times last year, and in recent years, when that wasn’t the case.

“(Toughness) is what is going to separate us, and we’re going to get talent,” he predicted. “And our environment is going to help. I’m talking about coming to a game and watching a game here. It’s different, and I think that’s one thing that we have an advantage.

“I haven’t been in this league yet, but I know what it’s like to play a game in sold-out Mountaineer Field, and I know what it’s like to play here, and it’s different than a lot of the teams in our league and that’s an advantage to us,” Rodriguez pointed out.

The process of studying the Big 12 teams is underway, and Rodriguez admits he’s impressed with what he’s seen so far.

“It’s a really good quarterback league with really talented teams,” he said. “We’ve done our summer scouts, but I haven’t done too much because there are a lot of teams that are just like us. I don’t know who they’ve got either.

“Scheme-wise, we do a lot of stuff defensively and offensively; we’re not that complicated, but we can be,” Rodriguez said. “Execution is more important to me than fancy play calls. We will be a little different than we were a year ago, and we will be a little different next year than we are this year.”

As he counts down the remaining days until preseason training camp, Rodriguez said he will take what he learned last year incorporating a large influx of new players at Jacksonville State and use that this year at West Virginia.

“We thought we were ready the first game and we weren’t, so I’ve reviewed how we went about doing it and some of it was leading up to the summer, and some of it we were doing too much in all phases,” he explained. “Our first game, we weren’t executing because we were doing too much, so I’m very conscious of that.”

Finally, Rodriguez indicated that this year’s roster is nearly complete except for a couple of players who are still dealing with some eligibility issues.

“The good part about it is they are all here this summer; we are not waiting on anybody to get here in August,” he concluded.

Basketball for the Golden Bears has not been pretty in recent years as the program has been below .500 for eight consecutive seasons. Mark Madsen was seen as a very solid hire when he was brought to Berkeley in 2023 and he’s helped the program take its first step or two back towards competency. Unfortunately, California struggled understandably in their debut season in the ACC and life doesn’t get any easier after major losses this past offseason.

Top scorers Andrej Stojakovic and Jeremiah Wilkinson both entered the transfer portal and left the Golden Bears with major holes in the backcourt. Other talented players like B. J. Omot and Mady Sissoko won’t be back, with the top returning players being guards DJ Campbell and Rytis Petraitis. They each averaged right around 8 points per game last season, though competing in the ACC will take much more than just them back as seniors.

Looking to avoid a ninth straight season with less than 15 wins, Madsen and his staff added a few intriguing freshman but really grabbed names from the transfer portal. Among the notable additions are Chris Bell from Syracuse and John Camden out of Delaware, two players who could really see significant run in this lineup with their size and athleticism. Quality guard play comes to town in the former of Nolan Dorsey from Campbell and Michigan’s Justin Pippen, though there’s another new guard that we have our eyes on for today.

Dai Dai Ames joins the Golden Bears for his junior season after decent work as an underclassman. The 6-1 guard out of Chicago was a Top 100 recruit when he headed to Kansas State as a freshman. He started half of their games with minor production before landing at Virginia last season. Ames’ sophomore season saw him average 8.7 points and 1.9 assists per game while knocking down just under 40% of his 3-pointers in a tough season for the Cavaliers.

What makes Ames really important for the Golden Bears is his ability to run the point. Once a highly-regarded prospect, California isn’t just getting someone who can make shots but a real point guard to run the show. Like we mentioned before, this team has lost an insane amount of talent and production in this backcourt and they’ll need to lean heavily on Ames having an upstart season as a junior, albeit at his third school in three years.

After two tough seasons, Ames looks to get California out of that recent hole though the road surely won’t be easy in the ACC. There is some nice returning talent and the combination of Bell, Camden, and Petraitis is a great starting point for this team. However, if this new-look roster is going to gel better than recent Cal products then Ames needs to be a leader and efficient producer for this squad.

The Oregon Ducks are taking all they can get from Oklahoma’s college softball dynasty.

Oregon announced on Wednesday that it hired OU great Paige Parker as the Ducks’ Director of Player Development. Parker will be reunited with her old OU pitching coach, Melyssa Lombardi, who is now the head coach at Oregon.

“Paige was an elite student-athlete,” Lombardi said in a statement. “Her relentless work ethic and drive to excel helped her win on the sport’s biggest stage and become a two-time national champion. She had an exceptional ability to spin the ball and compete on the mound. Having had the honor to coach her previously, I am overjoyed to now have the opportunity to work with her professionally.”

Paige Parker joining Ducks staff

Parker pitched for the Sooners in 2015-18 while Lombardi was on Patty Gasso’s staff. After 21 years on Gasso’s staff, Lombardi finally left Norman in 2018 for her first head coaching job at Oregon. Lombardi just led the Ducks to the Women’s College World Series for the first time in 2025.

While together at OU, Parker and Lombardi were part of two national championship teams in back-to-back seasons in 2016 and 2017. Parker ended her career as a four-time All-American and four-time Big 12 Pitcher of the Year.

“I couldn’t be more excited to reunite with Coach Lombardi and join her staff at the University of Oregon,” Parker said in a statement. “I’m so thankful to Coach Amy Hogue and the University of Utah for everything over the past four years — it’s been an incredible journey.

“I’m looking forward to what’s ahead at Oregon as we continue building toward something great. Competing for the Women’s College World Series year after year is the goal, and I’m all in. Getting to do it with Coach Lombardi makes it even more special.”

After her playing career, Parker started her coaching career as an assistant coach at William Jewel in 2019. Gasso then added her as a volunteers assistant in 2020 before she spent one season at Tulsa. Parker has been the associate head coach at Utah the last four seasons. At this rate, Parker will definitely be a big-time head coach one day.

Lombardi has loaded her Oregon staff with ties to OU beyond just Parker. Associate head coach Sam Marder was a volunteer assistant at OU in 2021 before Lombardi lured her to Oregon. Sydney Romero played for the Sooners and was a graduate assistant under Gasso before eventually becoming an assistant coach at Oregon.

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