Kei Kamara is looking to have his odd contract impasse with Crew SC resolved before the start of the season on March 6.

Kei Kamara is looking to have his odd contract impasse with Crew SC resolved before the start of the season on March 6.

The Crew's scoring leader is in the second year of a three-year contract and believes he should be paid more after scoring 22 goals and being named the team�s MVP last season. Kamara, who was paid $536,666 last year and likely was in line for a raise, missed the first four days of camp because of the salary dispute, though coach Gregg Berhalter said his absence was due to �a slight illness� and also mentioned an as-yet unexplained offseason surgery for Kamara.

This isn�t in dispute: The sides have been talking about his contract.

�To get it done before the season is definitely the goal,� Kamara told Dispatch reporter Shawn Mitchell. �Hopefully it will be solved before that comes. You don�t want (this) to go into the season.�

Kamara says he �can�t really say if talks are going well or not,� but he doesn�t want to hold out. He is representing himself.

�I feel like if I�m not out there training, I�m losing a lot if I want to be one of the top players in the league,� he said.

When defensive tackle Haskell Garrett committed to the 2017 Ohio State football recruiting class this week, the news was followed almost immediately by the question: �But will he stick?�

Bucknuts analyst Bill Kurelic laughed, even though Garrett is from faraway Las Vegas.

�Everybody seems to be questioning whether he is going to stick, but really, he is not a West Coast guy,� Kurelic said. �He was born in Connecticut, and he and his family moved to Hawaii for a while and then to Las Vegas. But he has a lot of family � aunts, uncles and cousins � on the East Coast.�

Garrett said earlier in the process he has long been an Ohio State fan.

�He had the Buckeyes in his top three before they ever even offered him a scholarship,� Kurelic said.

The four-star prospect is the highest-rated defensive tackle, from a consensus standpoint, coach Urban Meyer has recruited to OSU. The Buckeyes swung and missed on four elite defensive tackles for the 2016 class, which included just one tackle, Malik Barrow.

They have one other defensive tackle pledged to the 2017 class in four-star prospect Jerron Cage of Cincinnati.

Thad Matta had been known for his short bench with the Ohio State men's basketball team, but this season has been different. He has eight players averaging about 13 minutes and a ninth, freshman Mickey Mitchell, has appeared in every game since he became eligible.

But the OSU-Northwestern game this week showed that Matta hasn�t changed too much. When things get sticky, substitutions become less frequent. Against the Wildcats, he used just seven players in the second half; center Daniel Giddens played four minutes and A.J. Harris and Mitchell didn�t get in. Harris and Giddens had been starting until recently.

Matta used the same lineup for the final 9:24 of the game � Trevor Thompson, Jae'Sean Tate, Marc Loving, JaQuan Lyle and Keita Bates-Diop � and it's hard to blame him. The Buckeyes trailed 48-43 when that unit was reunited on the floor, and they outscored the Wildcats 28-15 the rest of the way, winning 71-63.

As usual, the Big Ten is leaning on Ohio for a lot of its football talent. ESPN�s Brian Bennett compiled a list of the conference's recruits for the 2016 class, and Ohio and Florida each led the roll call of states with 41 recruits each. Maryland produced 27, followed by Illinois (20), New Jersey (20) and Michigan (19).

Ohio State had the most Ohio recruits with 10, but Michigan State was close behind with eight.

Pennsylvania, once one of the Big Ten�s most fertile recruiting grounds, provided the league with just nine players. Five of those went to Penn State.

Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price said on MLB Network that John Lamb, one of the three young left-handers the team received from Kansas City in the Johnny Cueto deal on July 26, had disc surgery on his back in December. Price added that Lamb �probably won�t be ready until the middle of April,� which takes him out of the spring competition for three open spots in the rotation.

Lamb was 1-5 with a 5.80 ERA in 10 major-league starts last season, after going 10-2 with a 2.67 ERA in 20 starts in triple-A.

As soon as Jared Sullinger heard that former Ohio State and current Boston Celtics teammate Evan Turner was going to get his OSU number lifted to the Value City Arena rafters during the Michigan game next Tuesday, he decided to attend the ceremony.

"That's like a brother to me," Sullinger told the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican. "When he first got to Ohio State he really didn't have a family to lean on in Columbus. My family took him in like a brother. I want to support something that's beautiful like that. He deserves every bit of it."

Bob Hunter is sports columnist for The Dispatch.

bhunter@dispatch.com

@dailyhunter