Good morning, Buck Nudders. Welcome into the Buck Nuts morning.

I'm here on Monday, May 9th, 2022. I am Dave Biddle. I'm very happy to be joined by Patrick Murphy.

A lot to get into Patrick. Let's start with Mick Morati. We got a chance to meet with seven Ohio State coaches on Friday.

It was great, including Ryan Day. He was not on the schedule. The headman. We knew we were going to get six assistants.

And to me, Morati was the most interesting, not necessarily because the other guys weren't because they were.

We'll get into the guys like Jim Knowles. It's just pure knowledge every time. Yeah, he speaks with us. I just love it.

He sat down for about almost an hour. But we, you know, we've spoken with Knowles now, you know, about four or five times.

You know, and we want to get Morati maybe once a year. So that kind of makes him special. There's been a lot of questions about him.

We'll get to specifics in a moment. What, just in general, what stood out to you from the conversation with Mickey Morati, which lasted about 40 minutes itself?

Well, I mean, we get him less than, at least recently, less than once a year. The first question I think he was asked was about what the 2020 offseason was like and kind of dealing with that.

Obviously, we've heard about that from coaches and players. But he's the guy who spends most of the time that those guys miss the summer.

And in the weight room without those guys. And he said he thinks it had an impact even going into last year in terms of leadership toughness. A lot of the things we've heard about last year.

They didn't get that established with some of the younger guys that came in during that time. Even guys that have been in the program, but kind of missed a full normal offseason, which I think is interesting. Now, he did say he thinks they've got that back on track.

They figured things out. Obviously, they've had plenty of time now since that that strange offseason, that strange season to kind of work through things. And he believes guys are stepping up as leaders.

They've kind of forced some guys this with, especially with the winter program to kind of step into roles. Maybe they weren't entirely comfortable with.

So, you know, on top of the normal strength and conditioning and speed and all that stuff that he talked about, it was really a lot of the leadership toughness stuff that I think is going to be important.

And he was asked a lot about the Michigan game. I'm actually in the middle of working on a story about all this. And, you know, that he said that that really grabbed everyone's attention.

You know, if it wasn't, I think he said, if the volume wasn't turned all the way up, you're looking for a new set of speakers, you know, you're going to break something.

That's how they're feeling right now because of that loss to Michigan and not making the big 10 championship, not making the college ball playoff as well.

But, you know, he kind of put all that together, kind of from where they were in 2020 and kind of building into last year and how things didn't come together.

There's been a lot of talk on message boards about like, is he evolving enough? Is he evolving with the sports science? Like, yeah, maybe he was great, you know, 10 years ago. In fact, I don't think anybody would argue.

You know, and I've always said he's great right now. But there's been people that have asked these questions, you know, is he evolving as he's doing things with sports science, some of the, you know, more, you know, revolutionary things that we're seeing in the industry. And he talked about that a little bit. Get into that if you would, Patrick.

...