Ohio State Buckeyes
Evolution as revolution at Ohio State
By John Gasaway, BigTen Wonk
Nov 13, 2006 - 1:09:03 PM

Last year
26-6 overall, 12-4 in conference. Lost in second round of NCAA tournament to Georgetown, 70-52.

Back
Ron Lewis (11.2 PPG, 1.18 PPWS , 7.5 reb. pct. , 3.4 assists per 100 possessions , 4.6 TOs per 100 possessions )
Jamar Butler (10.1 PPG, 1.20 PPWS, 5.8 reb. pct., 8.5 a/100 poss., 3.4 TO/100 poss.)
Ivan Harris (3.6 PPG)
Matt Terwilliger (2.3 PPG)

New
Greg Oden (7-1 C, Indianapolis)
Daequan Cook (6-5 G, Dayton, OH)
Mike Conley, Jr. (6-1 G, Indianapolis)
David Lighty (6-5 G, Cleveland)
Othello Hunter (6-9 F, Winston-Salem, NC)

Gone
Terence Dials (15.3 PPG, 1.16 PPWS, 15.6 reb. pct., 1.2 a/100 poss., 3.9 TO/100 poss.)
Je'Kel Foster (12.2 PPG, 1.21 PPWS, 7.6 reb. pct., 5.6 a/100 poss., 3.5 TO/100 poss.)
J.J. Sullinger (10.1 PPG, 1.20 PPWS, 14.3 reb. pct., 3.1 a/100 poss., 3.0 TO/100 poss.)
Matt Sylvester (7.4 PPG, 0.97 PPWS, 6.5 reb. pct., 6.9 a/100 poss., 3.8 TO/100 poss.)

Official motto for 2006-07
"Lobbying earnestly to revise the NBA's minimum draft age to 22."

What we think we know in November (read the warning label)
Right now--mid-November--is the moment in the college hoops calendar when the overrating of individual talent at the expense of team performance is at its most egregious. And yet we do it every year, over and over: the preseason favorites look invincible. Their McDonald's All-American players are profiled ad nauseum. The favorites are unbeatable, on another level.

March is the opposite, of course. Win-or-go-home games played on neutral courts have a way of reminding us that this putative "different level" is much more a labor-saving device for our own individual attention spans than a true reflection of external reality.

And so in that spirit I want to say that I just don't believe Greg Oden's going to be as good as everyone's saying he's going to be.

I think he's going to be better. Much better.

Punctuated equilibrium and college hoops
Just eight short months ago, I wrote the following about a Big Ten player:

Over the past decade as the NBA has increasingly and now completely cornered the market on carbon-based life forms who are 6-10 or taller and can walk and chew gum at the same time, we have seen more of [this player's] ilk. He is a "dominant" big man (especially on offense) though in fact he is but 6-9. (Back in the day he would have been a solid power forward.)

I was talking about Terence Dials, conveniently enough. Oden, playing the same position for the same team as Dials, represents the sudden and abrupt reversal of this dynamic. Future hoops paleontologists, poring over box scores like so many fossilized remains, will wonder at the quantum leap captured by this little bit of deduction:

--Terence Dials was Big Ten Player of the Year in 2006.
--Greg Oden is four inches taller than Dials, equally strong, more athletic, and as quick if not quicker.
--Conclusion: Eep.

And that's speaking only of offense. There will be no DAD in this look at Oden--let's do the same for defense....

--In each of the past two seasons, the best defense in the Big Ten has been led by a dominant defensive presence in the post.
--Those two exceptional defenders were Jeff Hagen of Minnesota and Erek Hansen of Iowa.
--Greg Oden is not Jeff Hagen or Erek Hansen. He's Greg Oden.
--Conclusion: Eep.

And now for the really scary part, as least as far as ten other Big Ten teams are concerned. Thad Matta's Ohio State teams already, pre-Oden, play outstanding perimeter defense--and that was with no shot-blocking in the post backing them up. (Matta says on his team " all five guys are going to guard the ball." All coaches talk like that. Matta's teams--with recruits he inherited--have for the most part played like it.) If the overlap between new arrivals buying into the Matta system and Oden's post-injury but pre-draft time is at all considerable, we may just see the best defense we've seen in the Big Ten since Michigan State in 2000.

In point of fact the NBA's predilection for skimming off the cream of the high school crop in any given year was not an unalloyed negative where college hoops is concerned. For every LeBron James we didn't get to see play in college, there were three or four Kwame Browns we, thankfully, didn't have to see. Still, the almost total disappearance of the dominant big man (over the past 15 years it can be said of college rosters that height has existed in imperfect but trusty inverse relation to athleticism) has wrought a slow change on the game.

But slow change can at times be overturned by something much more sudden. And, if the performance lives up to the promise in this instance, you'd need Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldregde to explain something as abrupt and seismic as the arrival of Greg Oden.

Meet this blog's POY from last season
I chose Jamar Butler as my POY last year because of his across-the-board excellence:

Far and away the easiest question for me to answer as part of this little exercise was: who's the best point guard in the league? Dee Brown, Daniel Horton, and Drew Neitzel all have their strong points. But Butler, at least this year, had no weak points. He was stellar across the board: shooting 44 percent on his threes, dishing more than eight assists every 100 possessions (and even that number is slightly deflated by the Buckeyes' Illinois-in-2005-like ability to spread assists around), never turning the ball over, and playing consistently tough D. None of the others named above can say as much.

More love for Butler here.

Foul me before I drive again
Ron Lewis gets to the line better than any other player in the Big Ten and is a pretty good (not great) FT shooter once he gets there (78.1 percent). His shot selection last season was at times questionable (more than half his shots were attempted threes, yet he only made 33.9 percent of them) but this didn't matter much when he was the fourth option on the best offense in the Big Ten. It may not matter much this year either.

So does that mean Tony Stockman was "The In-Door Icemaker"?
Butler calls Ivan Harris "the microwave" in honor of the senior's ability to come off the bench and hit threes.

Depth in the post?
Matt Terwilliger takes prodigiously good care of the ball--even for one who never gets touches--but his rebounding and scoring are less noteworthy.

And the new breed....
Daequan Cook obviously has a green light from Matta. Here it is, November 13 of the young man's freshman season, and he's already launched 36 shots from the field in three games.

As early as it is, Mike Conley, Jr., already gives indications of being one of those freshmen that doesn't play like a freshman. See: 25 assists in three games.

David Lighty had some off-court offseason hijinks.

Othello Hunter is a juco transfer praised by Matta for his drive and athleticism.

"No acts of 'charity,' OK, coach?"
Matta has a new contract. Hope the OSU lawyers learned their lesson.