Maybe it’s time for Thad Matta to start recruiting for 2008, because it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to come here to play basketball until then.
With the recent 30-page “notice of allegations” submitted by the NCAA, it’s going to be tough to entice any top recruit to take a second look at OSU.
The report was published at possibly the worst time, as Greg Oden, a 7-foot junior center from Lawrence North High School in Indiana, visited OSU on May 6 along with AAU teammate Daequan Cook, who has verbally committed to OSU.
The two recruits make up 20 percent of the Top 10 2006 recruiting class, and coupled with their two teammates Mike Conley (No. 2 point guard) and David Lighty (No. 3 small forward) the four recruits rank higher than the Fab 5 that played in 1992 for the University of Michigan.
Thad Matta has done an insatiable job of recruiting this offseason, attracting the four superstars along with the top-rated small forward Thaddeus Young into coming to OSU. Cook, from Dayton Dunbar High School, has been quoted in the Dayton Daily News saying, “A national championship is what we really want,” and referring to their possibilities at OSU he said, “If we all come together, there’s no question we can get one.”
To make matters worse, Oden, the national Player of the Year by USA Today, Gatorade and Parade magazine, recently narrowed his college choices to Indiana, OSU, Michigan State and Wake Forest. With the top player in the nation narrowing your school as one of his top four and his ability to bring a crew with him, how does a school in OSU’s position avoid controversy and convince a group of 16 year-olds to come here?
Obviously OSU had to be careful. The recruits aren’t old enough to get into bars and although they really would have liked to, OSU could not introduce them to boosters of the basketball program.
Instead, Matta probably took them to the Buckeye Hall of Fame Café for some food and let them look at the football National Championship replica. Maybe they walked around the Fisher College of Business to see what it’s like to study at OSU, and they might have even checked out off-campus housing. Even that may be suspect for investigation.
According to the 30 pages of allegations, there were a whole bunch of things they could’ve done. They could have been enticed to fly round-trip to Hawaii or New York. They could’ve slept on a Craftmatic bed or been handed a Game Boy. They could’ve used a $328 cell phone along with $500 worth of phone cards to call their friends and teammates back home. Relatively speaking, it was a lot more fun playing under former coach Jim O’Brien than Matta. Screw legalities.
Unfortunately for the Buckeyes, Conley said in the Indianapolis Star on Saturday that he and Oden are delaying their decision on where to play college basketball in part “to see what’s up with … the NCAA sanctions.”
Uh-oh.
The tables turn on OSU now. Not so much to work harder to recruit premier athletes such as Cook and Oden, but to figure out how to reduce the possible NCAA sanctions so it can recruit freely in the future.
In a report by the Columbus Dispatch, Director of Athletics Gene Smith said, “the university might sanction the program by stripping it of its 1999 Final Four appearance, its two Big Ten co-championships and its four NCAA Tournament appearances from 1999 to 2002, when the alleged violations occurred.”
What a great way to recruit new talent. Well guys, we have nothing to show for the past seven years of our program, but if you go with our possible suspension for the next two years, you might get to go to the NCAA tournament in 2008. What d’ya say?
I would say no, thank you.
It’s a good idea by Smith to self-impose a sanction, but we did it last year and it definitely didn’t pay off this year. OSU may have to forfeit a couple years of postseason eligibility, a situation no recruit would knowingly step foot into.
If I were Matta or Smith, I would use some of those round-trip airfares to Hawaii, take the money for the flight back and use it to learn how to surf. Unfortunately, I’m not Matta, and it definitely isn’t that easy. Matta will have to face the fire ignited by Jim O’Brien, Smith will have to face the media constantly, and the OSU athletes who are affected by the sanctions will be forced to either transfer out like some are already doing or bite the bullet and play with the hopes of a postseason.
Smith said he does not know if the sanctions will be issued by November. As an OSU fan, I hope so, because that is when letter of intents can legally be signed.
Contrary to this column, Jeff Heller bleeds scarlet and gray. Heller, a senior in journalism, can be reached at [email protected].
