Duke and Kansas and North Carolina and Kentucky are routinely ranked among the national elite of top-five and top-10 teams after losing the core of its previous season’s team. That just hasn’t happened much for Ohio State in basketball. Football, yes, but not basketball…

Until this year! Coach Thad Matta’s third Buckeye contingent is so loaded with incoming freshmen All-Americans that the Buckeyes are picked as a consensus top-10 team entering the 2006-07 season. The arrival of four of the top freshman in the country, including the overwhelming choice as the No. 1 recruit in the nation – Greg Oden from Indianapolis’ Lawrence North High School – has the hoops experts predicting major success for Ohio State. This despite the fact that Ohio State has lost four starters from last year, including Big Ten Player of the Year Terrence Dials, five-year performers J.J. Sullinger and Matt Sylvester, and perhaps most importantly, the heart and soul, and defensive stopper: Je’Kell Foster.

The 7-0 Oden garnered virtually every prep player of the year accolade for two years running, and is already projected to be the No. 1 pick in whatever NBA draft he chooses to enter. Hopefully, that draft will be in 2010. Oden will be the last of the “Thad Five” recruiting class – juco transfer Othello Hunter is the fifth new recruit – to see action this year, though. He has been rehabilitating an injured right wrist that required surgery in June, and still had a pin in it at the time of this writing. Staff and trainers aren’t about to rush his return, so it may be the Big Ten season or later before fans see the big fellow.

Interviewed by the Columbus Dispatch in early October, Matta said this about Oden’s return: “The rehab is going great. As far as a date of return, there really isn’t one. I’m hoping we have him January 1st. That’s where we’re focusing. I’ll take him earlier, but I don’t want him to come back and have any risk [of re-injury] whatsoever. I’m not going to do that to him.” Ohio State would not be ranked among the preseason top-10 without the return of two outstanding guards who have the talent to be first-team all- Big Ten performers: junior point guard Jamar Butler and senior Ron Lewis, the team’s sixth man from a year ago.

Butler elevated his game as a sophomore and finished second among the Big Ten guards with a plus-2.5 assist-to-turnover ratio. He was also fifth in three-point field goal percentage, sixth in assists (4.65 per game) and seventh at the free throw line (.804). He is truly an all-around performer, and his savvy skills and experience will be a major asset to the squad.

Lewis, an intimidating 6-3 standout who isn’t afraid to mix it up in the paint, was arguably the league’s top sixth-man last year after averaging 11.2 points per game in his first season in the Big Ten. A veteran of 92 collegiate games, Lewis can get to the foul line, score in traffic and shoot the three. His leadership will be crucial to the team’s success.

Senior Ivan Harris is a 6-7 wing player who can bury the three-point shot and will come off the bench to provide the team with instant offense. Another returning veteran – 6-8 junior Matt Terwilliger – has improved in each of his first two seasons, and he does have significant minutes on his resume as he spelled Dials throughout most of his sophomore campaign. Productive rebounding and defensive work down low from Terwilliger is essential in the first two months of the season. The rest of the highly regarded recruiting class includes three guards: 6-1 point guard Mike Conley, Jr., who played with Oden and directed Lawrence North to three-straight state championships; 6-5 Daequan Cook, who led Dayton Dunbar to its first state title in 19 years last year; and 6-5 guard/forward David Lighty, whose Villa Angela-St. Joseph team from Cleveland finished as the state Division III runner-up last year. All three players were first-team all-state selections. Conley, Jr. and Cook joined Oden on the prestigious McDonald’s All-American team. Juco transfer Hunter, a 6-9 forward, was the last of the recruits to commit to Ohio State. He averaged 16.8 points and 11.4 rebounds per game for Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Fla., last season. Matta, 46-18 in his first two seasons at Ohio State and 148-49 through his first six seasons as a collegiate coach, has scheduled a terrific non-conference slate that will test his young squad to the limit. Included on the schedule are games against the last two NCAA champions: at North Carolina (Nov. 29) in the Big Ten/ACC challenge, and at defending national champion Florida (Dec. 23), as well as a home game against Tennessee (Jan. 13), and a neutral site (Indianapolis) game against Cincinnati Dec. 16 as part of the Wooden Tradition.