Can I watch Ohio State's game with Dayton? Here's all you need to know about the game
This Sunday’s game between Ohio State and Dayton is an exhibition game being played for charity. It’s not an official game, the stats won’t count and neither team’s win-loss record will be affected by whatever transpires Sunday evening inside UD Arena.
He didn’t directly say it, but Buckeyes coach Chris Holtmann would like everyone to keep that in mind when assessing whatever comes of the exhibition game being played to raise funds and awareness for mental health issues. Speaking to reporters inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center on Tuesday afternoon, Holtmann borrowed a football analogy to try and describe what the event will be like.
“The game will be very much an exhibition,” Holtmann said. “We’ll play different rotations, different lineups. It’ll have a little bit of a spring game feel in terms of trying different things, giving different looks, playing different rotations as we continue to tinker and prepare for our first game against Oakland.”
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That game against Oakland will be Nov. 6 at Value City Arena, and it will count in the standings. First comes this public exhibition against the Flyers and then a “secret” scrimmage against Clemson in Nashville the following weekend. Per NCAA rules, that game must be played behind closed doors with no media allowed to be present.
This 6 p.m. exhibition against the Flyers, though, will be played in front of a sold-out crowd eager to see Ohio State return to Dayton for the first time in nearly 35 years. In an email to season-ticket holders, Dayton athletic director Neil Sullivan encouraged fans to be respectful of the motivation for the game and also stated it will be played as a traditional game with two 20-minute quarters,
"We continue to express our deepest thanks and appreciation to Coach Chris Holtmann and the Ohio State community for participating in this important event," he wrote. "They have been incredibly gracious partners and we're thankful for their engagement. The game itself will be a traditional basketball exhibition game format with players competing hard, but we ask our fans to welcome and support Ohio State players, coaches and fans as partners in a bigger cause instead of rivaled opponents during this game."
Tuesday, Holtmann repeatedly said he is not treating it as a standard game.
“That will be an environment that will mimic really what a Big Ten road environment will look like,” he said. “We’re looking at it as another practice, another opportunity to get better, but obviously it’s against someone else, which I know our guys will welcome.”
Tuesday, Dayton was voted the preseason favorite to win the Atlantic 10 championship in the league’s poll. Junior forward/center DaRon Holmes II was voted first-team all-conference and a member of the all-defensive team while junior guard Malachi Smith was picked to the league’s second team.
No Ohio State player was picked to the first or second team in the unofficial official Big Ten preseason media poll conducted jointly by The Dispatch and The Athletic.
“It’s an opportunity for us to get to see how we perform against a really good team, a team expected to win their league and be an NCAA Tournament team,” Holtmann said. “That gives you great feedback. It’ll be coached differently than a regular-season game. In some cases, if a guy is struggling you might leave him in there a little longer just for him to experience and work through that a little bit. These are the kind of environments where you do that.
“Who we start in this game may not be who we start in two weeks.”
Why is Ohio State playing a charity exhibition game at Dayton?
Dayton coach Anthony Grant and his wife, Chris, lost their daughter, Jayda, when she took her own life on May 30, 2022. Jayda Grant was 20 years old and had struggled with mental health issues, particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and her loss was the definition of a tragedy.
It’s a grief that Grant has only recently started to speak about publicly, and this summer it led him to place a call to Holtmann.
“Anthony called back in the summer and asked if we’d be willing to play an exhibition game to start the season to raise money around mental health and mental health as it relates to teenagers and college-age kids,” the Ohio State coach said. “He said this will give ‘myself, our family an opportunity to share our personal story.’ We really jumped in with two feet, because it’s a great opportunity to raise money, to raise awareness, to also hopefully give Anthony and his family some healing in the midst of this.”
The university will also host other events around the game designed to draw more awareness to the cause.
Will the Ohio State-Dayton game be televised?
Actually, yes. Although the game was always planned to be carried live on the Ohio State radio network with Paul Keels and Ron Stokes calling the action, Dayton’s schedule page on its official website was updated Tuesday to indicate that the game will be broadcast on ESPN+, a subscription-only streaming network.
Friday, Dayton announced that the game will also be broadcast by Bally Sports Ohio on Monday at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Tuesday at 10 a.m.
“It’s unusual for one of our exhibition games to be televised or streamed,” Sullivan said in a statement, “but everyone involved agrees that the cause we are playing for this weekend is too important not to use every opportunity to get the message out.
“I’ve said it many times through the planning for this weekend, but we could not have a better partner in this than Coach Chris Holtmann and the Ohio State basketball team.”
How healthy will Ohio State be?
During Tuesday’s interview session, Holtmann made it clear that while Ohio State is a little bit banged up at the moment, most of the bumps and bruises the Buckeyes are dealing with are customary for this time of the preseason.
“We’re going long, hitting pretty much every day right now and that can beat up a body a little bit,” the coach said. “It’s a lot of scrimmaging. It’s body on body contact. It’s really physical practice. We’ve got guys that are banged up right now because you’ve got bumps and bruises because of the constant hitting that’s going on right now.”
Monday’s practice lasted nearly three hours, Holtmann said, and a lot of that involved bodies crashing into each other.
“I think that’s needed,” he said. “Coaches vary on that. Some coaches might worry about injuries or just say it’s October, why are we hitting this much? It’s a wide variety of people in terms of philosophies on what they want to do this time of year in terms of length and the number of minutes they’re hitting. All that stuff gets evaluated in the preseason, but we’re doing a fair amount right now.”
One player remains sidelined. First-year guard Taison Chatman, who underwent an undisclosed knee procedure during the preseason, is not practicing. At Big Ten media day in Minneapolis on Oct. 10, Holtmann said he would likely be out for the next 3-5 weeks. Tuesday, he said that situation is largely unchanged.
“Taison’s still going through his recovery from his procedure, and that’s still going to take a few weeks,” Holtmann said. “There’s no real update on his timeline.”
First-year center Austin Parks had missed some time during the preseason with back spasms, but Holtmann said he was due to return to full-court work Tuesday. He’s expected to be available against the Flyers.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Everything you need to know about Ohio State's charity game at Dayton
