Thad Matta was among the many coaches and players who assembled for the media in Chicago.
The Ohio State men’s basketball season begins Nov. 9 when the Buckeyes host Alcorn State at Value City Arena. But before another campaign commences, there’s still a little time for some last preseason conjecture.
That, in effect, was the point of the Big Ten Basketball Media Conference on Thursday in Chicago. All 22 men’s and women’s head coaches were on hand as well as selected players. Representing Ohio State along with coaches Thad Matta and Jim Foster were men’s standouts Evan Turner and David Lighty and a triumvirate of OSU women – Jantel Lavender, Samantha Prahalis and Shavelle Little.
Before rapid-fire interviews dominated the morning, the conference put out a release stating that a 24-member voting panel had pegged defending champion Michigan State as the preseason favorite of the media to win the men’s title. Purdue and Ohio State, each with all five starters returning, came in second and third, respectively, in the voting.
Michigan State point guard Kalin Lucas, the 2008-09 player of the year, not surprisingly, was named the preseason Player of the Year. The other four members of the preseason All-Big Ten team also are junior and players who were first-teamers at the end of last season – Ohio State swingman Evan Turner, Michigan guard Manny Harris, Penn State guard Talor Battle and Purdue forward Robbie Hummel.
Lucas, who averaged 14.7 points and 4.6 assists per game last season, said he was honored to be so recognized and admitted he’s a fan of the other star juniors, especially Turner.
“He’s a complete player,” Lucas said in Chicago. “He can dribble, he can shoot, he can post up. And he’s tall, too.”
Ohio State is coming off a 22-11 season that was filled with ups and downs. The preconference included eye-opening wins at Miami (Fla.) and against Notre Dame in Indianapolis, but it also saw the suspension of forward Nikola Kecman, the defection of point guard Anthony Crater and a season-ending injury to forward David Lighty.
The Buckeyes came out of the Big Ten season tied for fourth place at 10-8 and won a pair of games impressively in the conference tournament, knocking off Wisconsin and Michigan State before bowing to Purdue in the final, 65-61. The Buckeyes made the field of 65 for the NCAA tourney but were unceremoniously dumped by Siena in a first-round upset.
Still, the Buckeyes look fairly formidable this season with every letter winner back except center B.J. Mullens. And the media has taken notice. Ohio State was ranked between 13 and 22 in five of the six preseason publications, including CBSSportsline.com, FOXSports.com, Lindy’s, The Sporting News and Yahoo! Sports. The Buckeyes were not ranked by Athlon.
As for the third-place designation by the Big Ten media, Matta shrugged and said, “I really didn’t care. But third in this league would probably be considered pretty doggone good.”
Clearly, though, Matta believes he has a team with a chance to make some noise this season, and already he is seeing the positive effect of having a veteran group.
“I don’t want to say it’s comforting but it’s a good feeling of knowing that guys understand how we do practice, they understand the drills we’re going to do, they understand taking care of themselves, taking care of the academic side of things,” he said in Chicago. “Those are the things that make it a little bit easier.
“Now, is that going to get us a win? No, it’s not. You look at the schedule we’re going to play, we’ve got to be a prepared basketball team, we’ve got to be ready to go. And I think that’s the big challenge for us every day.”
Added Lighty, “It’s something that the program hasn’t had since 2006 with Terence Dials and J.J. Sullinger and Ron Lewis and all those guys. That year they were kind of in the predicament we’re in right now. They were picked fourth or third in the Big Ten, I think, maybe lower. But they had so much good team chemistry they came out and surprised a lot of people, pretty much the country, in winning the Big Ten.”
That was Matta’s second season at Ohio State, and Lighty was a signee from Cleveland Villa Angela-St. Joseph who watched OSU games on television and a few in person. He thinks this year’s team can follow the same model.
“Watching that team you could see everybody knew their role, everybody knew what they could do,” he said. “No one tried to go outside the box and everything that they did was to help the team. That’s exactly what we have to do.”
The Buckeyes could find themselves in contention along with MSU and Purdue or they could also fall back into a large pack of chasers.
“You look at Michigan State and Purdue as the elite teams but there’s another, I would say, seven teams that are really going to compete,” former Buckeye and Big Ten Network analyst Jim Jackson told Bucknuts.com. “You’ve got Michigan, you’ve got Ohio State, you’ve got Wisconsin, Penn State, Minnesota. You can throw those teams in a hat and see what falls out.”
“The depth and balance is there,” Illinois coach Bruce Weber said, “and on paper you have some experienced guys. In this day and age, so many kids leave. Now our junior class is just loaded.”
Some of the preseason polls such as those of CBS Sportsline and FOX Sports have as many as six Big Ten teams ranked somewhere in the top 25, a sign that the national view may finally be that the Big Ten is as good as it gets.
“There’s expectations that go into every year, but really every team I’ve ever had was different than I thought it was going to be and in every conference there’s sleepers at the bottom, there’s going to be injuries, there’s going to be a team that underachieves and there’s going to be a team that overachieves,” Michigan coach John Beilein said.
“So I don’t know what’s in store. All I know is with this many good returning players it has a chance to be special.”
Lucas said he and his colleagues will try to carry the torch for the league.
“Everybody wants to talk about the Big East or the ACC and sometimes they forget about the Big Ten,” he said. “The Big Ten is going to be real good. You’ve got great players in the Big Ten and good teams, too. You’ve got to come out every night competing and ready to play because the Big Ten is tough, and it’s very physical as well.”
Women Tabbed As Queens Of Court
While the Ohio State men have been picked to make improvements, the women are supposed to repeat their feats of last season – but that is no easy task.
The Buckeyes are coming off a 29-6 season in which they won the Big Ten regular-season title, the program’s fifth straight, and also doubled up by winning the conference tournament.
Also, Lavender, a junior center who racked up 20.8 points and 10.7 rebounds per outing last season, was tabbed as the women’s preseason Player of the Year by both the media and coaches (both panels are used by the women). Prahalis, a sophomore point guard, joined Lavender on both squads as did Illinois forward Jenna Smith, Purdue forward Tyra Grant and Michigan State center Alyssa DeHaan.
The two panels placed the teams 1-11 via vote. The coaches poll was topped by Ohio State followed in order by Michigan State, Minnesota, Purdue, Iowa, Illinois, Penn State, Northwestern, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. The media poll had OSU followed by MSU, Purdue, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Penn State, Indiana, Northwestern and Michigan.
The Buckeyes also boast incoming freshman standout guard Tayler Hill, a now-healthy Amber Stokes, a quality bench and Little, who is regarded as the Big Ten’s top defender.
“I think everybody on our team understands, from freshman to senior, that we have high expectations for this season,” Lavender said. “We don’t do anything less than the best and everybody feeds off of hard work.”
If the Buckeyes can best the conference again, it will net ring No. 6 in a row.
“Every player in our program has had the experience, so they’ve been walking on the court as a target in this league,” Foster said. “As a result of that you just develop an expectation and understand in order to maintain that you work very, very hard – because the other people are going to keep coming after you. If you don’t understand that and work hard on maintaining it, it’s not going to happen.”
