Ohio promoted Brian Smith to be its long-term head coach Wednesday, removing the interim tag.

Smith, who served as the Bobcats’ offensive coordinator this season and has been part of the staff since 2022, was named interim head coach Dec. 9 after Tim Albin’s departure to Charlotte. Smith will receive a five-year contract from the school, according to a source.

Ohio, which won the MAC to claim its first conference title since 1968, is set to face Jacksonville State on Friday at the StaffDNA Cure Bowl in Orlando, Florida. The Bobcats led the MAC in scoring, yards per game and rushing this season.

“He presented a plan for not only sustaining our culture and foundation but also building upon it in the evolving landscape of college football,” athletic director Julie Cromer said in a statement. “He prioritizes our student-athletes’ experiences and shares our common goals of developing leaders, graduating students, unifying our community and amplifying our university.”

Smith, 44, came to Ohio as running backs coach and passing game coordinator in 2022 and added the associate head coach title in 2023. He was Washington State’s offensive coordinator and running backs coach in 2020 and 2021 and also has coordinator experience from Hawai’i, working under Nick Rolovich at both schools.

Smith is a former offensive lineman and long snapper at Hawai’i who had two coaching stints at his alma mater, as well as stops at Cal Lutheran, Occidental, Portland State and Oregon State.

Ohio has won 10 games for the past three seasons under Albin and has been one of the more consistent Group of 5 programs, going 144-94 since the start of the 2006 season.

Ohio State’s availability took another unforeseen turn Tuesday evening.

As the Buckeyes took the floor to host Valparaiso at Value City Arena, two injured players remained unavailable. Ques Glover and Colin White, who have now missed eight and five consecutive games, respectively, are dealing with ankle injuries they suffered while playing in games. The two continue to progress, coach Jake Diebler has said, but it’s not clear how quickly they will heal.

The other half of the availability report was a lot less cut-and-dry. Sophomore center Aaron Bradshaw, although technically available to play, was again out for a second consecutive game while working his way back into the mix after not being allowed to participate in team activities for nearly a month due to a university investigation into an alleged domestic incident at his off-campus apartment.

Joining him on the list was fifth-year guard Meechie Johnson Jr., who along with Bradshaw was a critical part of a transfer recruiting class for Diebler’s first full year. A starter for the first 10 games and the team’s second-most-used player, Johnson played 29:30 in Saturday’s 91-53 loss to No. 2 Auburn in Atlanta.

After Tuesday’s 95-73 win against the Beacons, Diebler made reference to Johnson in his opening statement.

“Thoughts and prayers are with Meechie as he’s dealing with some personal matters right now,” he said. “Don’t have a timetable on that yet, but obviously thinking about him as well.”

Following that 38-point loss to the Tigers, tied for Ohio State’s most lopsided loss in nearly 30 years, junior Evan Mahaffey and sophomore Devin Royal said Tuesday that the players had a postgame meeting where they collectively said what they felt they needed to say in order to try and turn the season around. When the Buckeyes resumed practice to prepare for Valparaiso, a game they won 95-73, Johnson was not with them.

“He and I have been having some dialogue the last couple days,” Diebler said. “He wasn’t able to practice the last couple days.”

Ohio State Buckeyes: Join the Ohio State Sports Insider text group with Bill Rabinowitz, Joey Kaufman Adam Jardy

It’s been a challenging return to Ohio State for Johnson, who was a second-team all-SEC pick at South Carolina last year while averaging 14.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.9 assists while helping the Gamecocks win their most games since 2016-17 (26) and return to the NCAA Tournament. While his 3-point shooting has gone up to a career-best 35.7%, his scoring is down (9.1 points per game), his turnover average is up, his free-throw rate is half what it was a year ago and his two-point shooting percentage is down from 47.1% a season ago to 35.3%.

Clearly, his homecoming hasn’t yet lived up to the hopes he laid out during the preseason, when he represented Ohio State as one of two players at Big Ten media day. Did any of that lead to Johnson’s leave of absence from the team due to what was described by an Ohio State team spokesman as a personal matter?

“I don’t think that’s something we can get into right now,” Diebler said. “That would be pure speculation at this point. One thing I know, I know how important family is to him. He’s really important to me, so we’re just supporting him through this.”

It was more candor Diebler was able to share compared to when Bradshaw’s absence was announced shortly before a Dec. 22 home game against Campbell, when he referred to the statement released by the university and said he was unable to provide further context.

Bradshaw watched his second consecutive game while wearing street clothes on the team bench. He has not played since logging 26:33 against Evansville on Nov. 19, moving him to 7.8 points and 4.8 rebounds in 23.4 minutes per game through the first four games of the year.

Ohio State Buckeyes: Ohio State’s Meechie Johnson aiming for storybook ending to emotional career

Ohio State played five games with Bradshaw not participating in any team activities before Diebler said on his Dec. 11 radio show that he had been allowed to return to the team. That came with a return-to-play progression, Diebler said, and it’s also not clear when that will be complete.

Diebler said Tuesday that the 7-1, 215-pound center is allowed to play once he’s physically ready to play.

“He’s still got to build up to get there,” the coach said. “Wasn’t ready to go today. This is an ongoing evaluation really one day at a time.”

The Buckeyes are utilizing their sport science staff as well as the training and conditioning staff to try and get him back into action. Ohio State’s next game is Saturday against No. 5 Kentucky, Bradshaw’s former team, and it seems a stretch to think he could go more than a month without playing and then jump back in against a top-five team that he shares an emotional tie with.

“There’s a level he needs to play at and practice reps he’s got to get at to where he’s able to get out there and certainly play well for him but also for us,” Diebler said. “I just wish I could say it’s this-day thing. Our whole performance team, it’s all hands on deck. Believe me, it would help us if we had this exact timeline but it really is a day-to-day thing right now. He’s working to do it and we’re seeing progress, which is the encouraging part.”

When that will result in an on-court impact remains anyone’s guess.

ajardy@dispatch.com

@AdamJardy

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If you can’t raise the dead, might as well raise a glass to them!

An Ohio funeral-home owner says he wants to be “a party planner for the dead”  — by opening the state’s first bereavement center with booze.

Evergreen Funeral Cremation and Reception in Columbus hopes to soon have a liquor license to allow his patrons to mix mourning with merriment.

“My role in this position is to kind of be a party planner for the dead,” Hunter Triplett, the owner of Evergreen Funeral Cremation and Reception in Columbus, told WSYX.

“Be more of a celebration of life than more of the multi-day traditional services.”

As his family was applying for the liquor license, Triplett said inspectors told them Evergreen would be the first funeral home in the state allowed to serve alcohol.

“We will only be serving alcohol when people are on this premises and remain on the premises until the continuation of the services just for the safety of the people in the community around,” said Triplett, whose family bought the property in 2015.

A funeral home bar would not only allow mourners to send off their loved ones in a spirit of festivity, Triplett thinks, but would help them save possibly thousands by rolling the whole funeral experience — wake, service, burial, reception — into one package.

Located in an old chocolate factory building since 2015, Evergreen has sprawling facilities and is located directly across the street from a cemetery.

“It’s kind of like a one-stop shop for funeral service. The package being around $5,000-$6,000, contrary to the national average, which can be upwards of $10,000.”

If approved for a D3 license, Evergreen would be permitted to sell beer, wine and hard liquor for consumption on-site.

Though some states ban the service of food or drinks at funeral homes — including New Jersey, North Dakota, Massachusetts, and Connecticut — alcohol at funeral homes has been on the rise in recent years.

“People used the phrase over and over again that the funeral homes were like a ‘dark lifeless tomb’ with a certain smell to them and certain look to them,” said Scott Mueller of Mueller Memorial in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

“People said, ‘When we go, we want to have a party atmosphere. More of a celebration.’ So we decided to put a bar in,” he told NBC News in 2017. “People used to say, ‘I can’t believe you used to keep the hearses in here,’ or say, ‘I think I can smell something.”

And at Monahan Funeral Home in Providence, Rhode Island, the owners’ converted their old attached garage into a fully functioning pub — which mourners often pour into once they finish the funeral service.

New York state revised its laws in 2016 to allow food and beverages to be served at funeral homes.

Evergreen hopes to have its license and begin serving in early 2025.