• Jasmyn Burns hit two home runs for Ohio State in an NCAA tournament victory over North Carolina.
• Megan Frye hit a three-run homer for the Buckeyes.
• OSU will now face Tennessee in a game May 18.

The No. 2 seeded Ohio State Buckeyes softball team (44-12-1) beat No. 3 North Carolina May 17th by a final score of 9-6 in the Knoxville Regional of the NCAA tournament.

The Buckeyes, making their 13th NCAA appearance, scored in five of their six turns at bat.

Reagan Milliken got OSU going with a solo home run in the second inning. Hadley Parisien and Jasmyn Burns hit back-to-back homers in the sixth.

Burns had two bombs on the afternoon. Morgan Frye hit a three-run home run over the center field fence with two out in the fifth. Taylor Cruse belted a solo shot. Ohio State’s other run came off a Kaitlyn Farley RBI single.

The offensive explosion was little surprise. The Buckeyes entered the postseason leading the nation in runs scored (473), home runs (137), slugging percentage (.707) and runs per game (8.44).

Ohio State will battle the region’s top seed, Tennessee, in Knoxville on May 18. The game starts at noon.

The Volunteers are coming off a 17-0 over the MAC champion Miami Redhawks.

The winner of the Knoxville Regional will face the winner of the Baton Rouge Regional next weekend in a Super Regional.

NOBLE COUNTY, Ohio (WKRC) – Fracking operations at a site in Ohio were halted in connection to recent earthquakes.

According to WFMJ, hydraulic fracturing operations at a well pad in Noble County, Ohio were halted due to recent seismic activity in the region.

Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) spokesperson Karina Cheung confirmed to WFMJ Wednesday that the earthquakes were directly connected to gas and oil operations, namely hydraulic fracturing operations by Energy Acquisition Partners (EAP).

“There has been some recent earthquake activity in Noble County due to oil and gas operations, specifically hydraulic fracturing operations by Energy Acquisition Partners (EAP) operating as Encino Energy. Hydraulic fracturing operations have been halted on the well pad,” Cheung told reporters with WFMJ.

Cheung told the station that some of the quakes in Noble County were strong enough to be felt.

The Ohio Seismic Network is responsible for monitoring earthquake activity across the state. The organization has recorded multiple small quakes in Noble County near Pleasant City, Ohio in the past few weeks, including the following:

• April 29: 2.8 magnitude earthquake detected approximately 2 miles southeast of Pleasant City at 10:09:14 p.m. EDT. (33 felt reports recorded)

• May 2: 2.4 magnitude earthquake detected around 2 miles southeast of Pleasant City at 6:43:30 a.m. EDT. (12 felt reports recorded)

• May 6: 2.3 magnitude earthquake detected approximately 2 miles southeast of Pleasant City at 4:00:45 p.m. EDT. (One felt report recorded)

• May 8: 3.2 magnitude earthquake detected about 2.5 miles southeast of Pleasant City at 11:13:43 p.m. EDT. (33 felt reports recorded)

According to WFMJ, ODNR officials did not say how long the suspension of operations would last.

The station noted that there have been several instances where seismic activity has been linked to oil and gas operations in Ohio, including the following:

• A 2011 quake that was centered on Division Street in Youngstown, Ohio was linked to a brine injection well. The Northstar fluid injection well in Youngstown was closed after multiple earthquakes occurred.

• The State of Ohio shut down an injection well in Wethersfield Township in 2014 due to earthquake activity.

• A temporary moratorium on drill and fracturing was issued after multiple earthquakes occurred in Poland Township.

According to WFMJ, fracking was linked to seismic activity, including earthquakes, in a 2023 study examining data from Eastern Ohio.

Professor Michael Brudzinski, a professor of geology and environmental earth science at Miami University, concluded that earthquakes can be induced by both the injection of fluids during hydraulic fracturing and the subsequent extraction of oil and gas, per the station.

In recent years, Ohio State football fans have become increasingly frustrated with the high volume of noon kickoffs their beloved Buckeyes have been forced to play.

One Ohio legislator is hoping to remedy that.

Ohio Representative Tex Fischer has authored a bill that would prohibit Ohio State from playing marquee games before 3:30 p.m. ET. A notable exception would be for the Buckeyes’ annual rivalry game against Michigan, which traditionally kicks off at noon.

REQUIRED READING: College football fans, donors drove the clown car in NIL era, but was that so bad?

Since Fox, one of the Big Ten’s television partners, introduced its “Big Noon Saturday” window ahead of the 2019 season, Ohio State has become a fixture of the earliest broadcast time of the day. The Buckeyes have played 35 noon games since the start of the 2019 season, including seven last year on their way to their first national championship in a decade. Each of Ohio State’s final six regular-season games began at noon, three of which came at home.

The bill, as written, would prevent any game from being played in the state of Ohio if it meets both of the following criteria:

1. One of the competing teams is a football team from a state university
2. Both teams are ranked in the top 10 of the Associated Press poll of the FBS

Of note, only one of the Buckeyes’ 2024 games would have fallen under that criteria: The Nov. 23 meeting with Indiana, a game in which the Buckeyes and Hoosiers were ranked No. 2 and No. 5 in the AP Top 25, respectively. Ohio State played only one other top-10 team in the noon slot against No. 3 Penn State, though that was on the road.

If the bill becomes law, the ramifications for skirting it would be steep. The legislation states that if a game starts before 3:30 p.m., the Ohio attorney general will impose a fine of $10 million against either the host team’s conference (the Big Ten) or the television network, whichever one scheduled the earlier kickoff.

While noon kickoffs offer fans, particularly those watching from home, time to take in other college football games from across the country later in the day, they’re generally an annoyance for fans attending the game in person, forcing them to wake up earlier in the morning and giving them less time to tailgate.

REQUIRED READING: Nick Saban: ‘Not sure we really need a commission’ to fix college athletics

When Fox debuted “Big Noon Saturday,” it was a way for the network to air a marquee matchup during what’s typically a barer early slate rather than having to compete against the SEC’s longstanding 3:30 p.m. game on CBS or ESPN’s primetime game (CBS now primarily airs a Big Ten game during the 3:30 p.m. slot as part of a new media rights deal with the conference). Fox adds some pageantry to its noon kickoff by bringing the network’s pregame show, “Big Noon Kickoff,” to the site of the game, much in the same way ESPN does with “College GameDay.”

Unfortunately for Ohio State, the Big Ten’s most consistently successful program since “Big Noon Saturday” launched six years ago, that interest in putting the Buckeyes in marquee time slots for Fox often means receiving a disproportionate share of early start times.

The bill hasn’t yet appeared on the Ohio legislature database, but text of it was published Thursday by journalist D.J. Byrnes of The Rooster.