Victory today could move Ohio State men's basketball team to No. 1 ranking

With No. 1 Duke having lost to Florida State on Wednesday night, OSU coach Thad Matta might be taking the Buckeyes on another step from great team to great program.

View full sizeMarvin Fong / The Plain DealerOhio State men's basketball coach Thad Matta is trying to build his Buckeyes into a perennial powerhouse.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — When Ohio State reached No. 1 in the Associated Press poll the week of Feb. 26, 2007, it had been 45 years since the Buckeyes had been there. If Ohio State beats Penn State today, the latest gap between appearances at No. 1 will be much shorter -- less than four years.

That's the difference between a great team and a great program, and at 17-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country, and with No. 1 Duke having lost to Florida State on Wednesday night, OSU coach Thad Matta may be taking the Buckeyes on another step from great team to great program.

Getting to the No. 1 ranking by the AP and the national title game with super freshmen Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr. four years ago could have been lightning in a bottle. Getting to No. 1 again with a new roster and new style shows that the Buckeyes may be reaching the point where competing at the top of the college basketball world isn't a reason for excitement, it's an expectation.

"When I came here seven years ago, our goal was to try to build a top 10 college basketball program," Matta said Friday. "Not that you're going to win the thing every year, but be in the hunt. I think we've won three Big Ten championships in five years, which is really difficult to do. . . . So I'm pleased with where we are. I think this, it's a lot easier getting to the top than staying at the top."

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Ohio State most recently held the No. 1 ranking late in the 2006-07 season, entering the NCAA Tournament at the top of the polls before losing the national title game to Florida.

Since then, 12 teams over the past four seasons have occupied the No. 1 ranking, though three elite programs -- North Carolina, Kansas and Duke -- have combined to occupy the top spot 72 percent of the time. If Ohio State beats Penn State today, the No. 2 Buckeyes should move up to No. 1 next week, helping them move toward Thad Matta's goal of being a top 10 program.

Here are the 12 teams that have been No. 1, with how many weeks they held the spot:

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No. 2 Ohio State vs. Penn State

Tipoff: 5:30 p.m., Value City Arena, Columbus.

TV/radio: Big Ten Network; WFUN AM/970.

Notable: Penn State senior guard Talor Battle takes and makes a lot of contested shots and should be the toughest matchup yet for freshman guard Aaron Craft, who has been making his mark with his defense for Ohio State (17-0, 4-0 Big Ten). Battle scored 26 in Penn State's most recent win over Illinois, but he was only 3-of-14 against Michigan State a week ago, and the Nittany Lions (10-6, 3-2) still found a way to win. Penn State 6-10 senior forward Andrew Jones is coming off his best games of the year, averaging 14 points in the two wins.

Next for OSU: Wednesday vs. Iowa, 6:30 p.m.

-- Doug Lesmerises

The Buckeyes realized they could ascend to the top spot while on the team bus back from the airport Wednesday night, after flying home from a four-point road win at Michigan. They watched Duke fall to the Seminoles, a team the Buckeyes beat earlier in the season. And, Matta and the players said, nobody reacted to that loss and what it might mean. No midnight chants of, "We're No. 1."

"I think they just flipped it on. I was halfway asleep in the back," said fifth-year senior David Lighty, the only player on the roster who knows what it's like to be No. 1. "It's early in the season. There's a long ways to go. We're looking at the bigger picture."

The bigger picture shows that Ohio State might be getting past the point where a ranking is a story in itself. When the Buckeyes did it in 2007, with their record at 26-3 (though they'd been No. 1 in the coaches poll earlier in the season), they were doing something that an Ohio State team hadn't done since the heyday of Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek. And they were doing it for the first time under Matta. Back then, after that early-season No. 1 ranking in the coaches poll, Matta said he saw the ranking as a sign of progress, but said, "I don't think our program is where we want it completely and I don't think this team is where we need it completely."

Matta always thinks his team can get better, and after tight wins over Minnesota and Michigan in their past two games, the Buckeyes still can improve. But the program as a whole? Now Matta said Friday it is where he wants it to be.

In three of the past five seasons, the Buckeyes have been ranked in the top six in the final poll before the NCAA Tournament, have won those three conference titles and have turned out six first-round NBA Draft choices and last year's national player of the year in Evan Turner. And now this.

"I think it's shaping up, and I also think not a lot of programs have been hit with the early departures like we have. That's part of it, and I'm not making excuses for it. I'm very pleased," Matta said. "And I'm more pleased with the kids we have in the program and how they carry themselves."

With a win over the Nittany Lions (10-6, 3-2), who have consecutive wins over ranked teams, knocking off Michigan State and Illinois, the players would carry the Buckeyes to the top again. All-time, the Buckeyes are 61-5 when playing with a No. 1 ranking, having carried it through most of 1960, 1961 and 1962. That's when competing with the elite was the norm at Ohio State.

That's the big picture, beyond another shot at No. 1, that the Buckeyes are trying to paint.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: dlesmerises@plaind.com, 216-999-4479

Source: http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2011/01/victory_today_could_move_ohio.html

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