Ohio
Puff Johnson on campus but not ready to play for Ohio State yet
In-season roster addition Puff Johnson has arrived on Ohio State’s campus, but the sixth-year transfer won’t be in uniform for the Jan. 20 home game against Minnesota.
That was the message from coach Jake Diebler on Jan. 19, just three days removed from Johnson having a temporary restraining order approved by a Franklin County judge granting him immediate eligibility to join the Buckeyes during the 2025-26 season. He’s on campus, listed in the official game notes and is on the roster, but seeing him in action against the Golden Gophers would be too much, too soon according to Diebler.
“Gotten a chance to work him out a couple times,” the coach said. “It’s a daily evaluation as to when he’s going to be ready to play in a game … (but) no, do not anticipate him being on the court (against Minnesota).”
Johnson was granted eligibility on Jan. 16 and, logistically, couldn’t make it to campus on time for the 1 p.m. tip against UCLA. After the 86-74 win for the Buckeyes, Diebler said the next steps would involve physically getting Johnson in the building and starting to assess where he was physically while assimilating him with his new teammates. Although he had been taking classes, Johnson had not been on campus for months while hoping to be granted eligibility.
Suddenly, he’s a Buckeye, and now the 25-year-old wing is getting a crash course on this year’s team.
“There’s two things: there’s him physically being ready to play in a game and then there’s him within how we play and learning what we’re doing and things, being ready to play in a game,” Diebler said. “He’s working really hard at both to be ready as quickly as possible. I don’t know when that’s going to be quite yet, but we’ve at least gotten started and started working on it.”
Johnson was seeking this sixth year of eligibility in part because injuries limited him to 14 games as a freshman at North Carolina in 2020-21 and 17 games last year at Penn State. After the UCLA game, Diebler said Johnson had told him that he was in good shape, but the coach said exactly what that meant would remain to be seen.
On Jan. 19, Diebler said early impressions are positive.
“The thing we’ve got to check is game shape,” he said. “When you’re playing up and down multiple possessions against live bodies, that’s a different impact than just running up and down against no defense. That’s what we’re in the process of evaluating, but he’s a guy who’s wanted this and been preparing for this, but there’s a different type of game shape.”
As far as a baseline level of fitness, Diebler said, “I feel good about where he’s at.”
Johnson will wear No. 6 for the Buckeyes. He is listed at 6-foot-8, 200 pounds on the team’s updated official roster and is expected to slot into Ohio State’s rotation on the wing when he’s up to speed. In 111 career games, Johnson has averaged 5.3 points and 2.6 assists but is expected to help Ohio State on the defensive end.
“He’s got an ability to guard multiple positions,” Diebler said. “He’s got good positional size. He has familiarity with this conference. He’s shown an ability to rebound. All those things are really good. He’s been a guy who’s had some decent steal numbers in the last two years as well, which is an area we’ve got to continue to get better in. Defensively, that’s where it starts.”
Johnson averaged 1.4 steals per game for Penn State last season and averaged nearly one steal per game during his two years with the Nittany Lions. In 2024-25, he also averaged a career-best 10.2 points per game.
“He can play multiple positions,” Diebler said. “And, because of his experience and basketball IQ, we anticipate him being a guy who is a blender on the court, a guy who adds to what already is a really good chemistry this team has. He’s got to play to his strengths: cutting, rebounding, catch and shoot 3s, driving, scoring, but also within what we’re doing.”
Ohio State men’s basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social or on Twitter at @AdamJardy.
Out of prison, Indiana’s caviar king back on Ohio River to find fishing holes taken
David Cox, of English, Indiana, says once he began setting his nets again after a two-year prison sentence and a three-year ban on commercial fishing, all of his once-secret spots were taken.
Can you eat fish from the Ohio River?
In 1975, future presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, bet 20 pounds of New England cod that the Red Sox would defeat the Reds in the World Series. If things went south for Boston, Ohio governor James Rhodes promised to send Dukakis 10 pounds of Lake Erie perch and 10 pounds of Ohio River catfish. The Reds ended up winning and the cod was sent to the Convalescent Home for Children, in Cincinnati.
At the time, people were still eating catfish from the Ohio without too much concern. The fish were also served at several restaurants along the river.
There were warnings in 1977
But two years later, in 1977, The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission released the results of a study of contaminants found in the tissues of Ohio River fish. They warned anglers in cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Wheeling and Gallipolis that man-made chemicals known as PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, had been discovered in the river fish. Later, high concentrations of mercury were discovered in the fish, too.
Thanks to the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the environmental regulations that followed, the river is now cleaner than it was in the seventies. And it’s still teeming with a variety of fish, including catfish, striped bass, drum and black bass, among other species.
But even though PCBs were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979, they are still found in fish, since they remain in the sediment in the bottom of the river. “Organisms live in the sediment and fish feed on them,” Rich Cogen, the executive director of the Ohio River Foundation told The Enquirer. Mercury is also a big problem, according to Cogen.
So the question is: Can you eat fish caught in the Ohio River?
The short answer is yes. But it depends on what species you are eating and where along the river you caught it.
There are also very strict limitations on how frequently you should eat them, according to the web site for the Ohio Sport Fish Consumption Advisory, part of the Ohio Department of Health.
In areas of the river between the Belleville Lock, located 204 miles downstream from the river’s origins in Pittsburgh, to the Indiana border, the advisory agency currently recommends consuming Ohio River fish no more than once a month max. That area includes Adams, Brown, Clermont, Gallia, Hamilton, Lawrence, Meigs and Scioto counties.
Here’s where to check
Recommendations change throughout the year, but you can keep up by visiting the Ohio Department of Health’s Sport Fish Consumption Advisory page, which provides updated information on when certain fish, usually bottom feeders such as carp, are deemed too dangerous to eat at all.
Here’s who should take a pass on Ohio River fish
The agency also warns that people who are more likely to have health effects from eating contaminated fish, includingchildren younger than 15 years old, pregnant women and women who are planning to become pregnant to avoid Ohio River fish altogether.
Just because you have to limit the amount of fish you eat, doesn’t mean the river is a bad place for fishing, as long as you limit your intake or do catch-and-release fishing. Just make sure you have a proper fishing license before casting your line.
Have a question for Just Askin’? Email us.
The Just Askin’ series aims to answer the questions that no one seems to have an answer for, except maybe Google.
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It isn’t over until it’s over. That’s the case for both the UCLA Bruins football program recruiting and for quarterback Brady Edmunds. Edmunds is currently committed to head to Ohio State but he took a visit from UCLA offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy earlier this week.
Kennedy met Edmunds on Thursday despite the fact that the quarterback has been committed to the Buckeyes since December of 2024 but could the UCLA Bruins be making a run at flipping the quarterback?
Edmunds has only had an official visit with Ohio State but could UCLA heave a heat check on the 6’5” quarterback? New UCLA head coach Bob Chesney is off to an unbelievable start to his recruiting with the Bruins and flipping a recruit of Edmunds’ caliber would be his most impressive move yet.
247 Sports has Edmunds as the No. 16 quarterback in the class, which would give UCLA a clear predecessor for Nico Iamaleava whenever the Bruins current starting quarterback decides to head to the professional level.
It’d be a full circle moment for the Bruins, as Edmunds was originally recruited to Ohio State by former UCLA head coach Chip Kelly, who bailed on UCLA to go run the Buckeyes offense. Ohio State is a great spot for a developing quarterback, as the Buckeyes produce tons of NFL talent, especially at the wide receiver position, which would help Edmunds put up some gaudy numbers in Columbus.
Chesney and the Bruins have geography on their side, Edmunds attends Huntington Beach High School in Southern California, which could potentially become a factor if Edmunds views UCLA as a program on the rise that’d be much closer to his friends and family than out in Ohio.
Time will tell if Kennedy’s visit will make a difference but UCLA’s recruiting has made waves in the first offseason under Chesney and the new regime.
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