Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of four staff columns leading up to Saturday’s “Battle of the Bricks” men’s basketball showdown in The Convo against archrival Miami.      

At first inquiry, members of the Ohio and Miami basketball teams say the rivalry between their two schools is more between the fans than the players. But what eventually comes out is that the Battle of the Bricks does exist for the teams, because both are consistently competitive.

There aren’t many thriving rivalries in which one team regularly brow beats the others, and true to that rule the Bobcats are 8-8 against the RedHawks during Tim O’Shea’s tenure as head coach. 

“We’re always going to play each other more than I’d like, to be honest,” O’Shea said, recalling the four times that the teams met in the Mid-American Conference Tournament.

Last year, Miami knocked Ohio out of the MAC tournament on its way to a championship. In 2005, the Bobcats won their own title after defeating the RedHawks in the tournament semifinals.

Those two games were the first things Miami center Tyler Dierkers brought up when asked about his team’s attitude toward Ohio.

“It seems like any time we play each other it’s close or an important game, and it has started to mean more,” said Dierkers, who is friends with Ohio guard Bubba Walther.

Walther and Dierkers won a Division I state title in 2003 at Cincinnati-Moeller High School and they still work out together in the off-season. But “just because you have a certain relationship with one guy doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t like beating his team,” Dierkers said.

“For those 40 minutes we hate each other, especially because he’s at Miami. Every other game I root for him and hope he does great, but not on Saturday,” said Walther, who’s more concerned that the Bobcats find a way to prevent Dierkers from adding to his assist total, which is second on the RedHawks at 48.

“He’s one of their best passers and for a big man it’s not common,” Walther said. “If we can take him away I think it will take away from some of their looks.”

They’ve talked and joked about the game this week, but both Walther and Dierkers realize the other wants to snag their first MAC win of the season.  And if it’s the Bobcats who win this weekend, it would be the first time in Charlie Coles’ 11-year career as coach of the RedHawks that he starts 0-2 in conference play.

While Coles is often a target of O Zone chants, not everyone in The Convo dislikes him. O’Shea holds a high respect for Coles and his staff, he just doesn’t always like that many of the games between the two teams are unpredictably close.

“It’s impossible for me to hate a guy like Charlie Coles,” O’Shea said. “But we don’t look forward to playing them because they’re hard to play against.

“There’s a whole bunch of other teams I’d rather see come in here for the first week that aren’t the RedHawks, but that’s the way it is,” he continued. “It’s one of those games that you know no matter how well you prepare and how well you play, it’s probably going to come down to the last minute or two.”

Katie Carrera is the sports senior writer for The Post. Send her an e-mail at kc207604@ohiou.edu.