By: AP via SportingNews.com -
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Here is the Ohio State men’s basketball team in a nutshell: no seniors, missing its top three scorers, but lots of promise, lots of possibilities.

For the third year in a row, coach Thad Matta will be overseeing a Buckeyes team that has more newcomers than veterans, more freshmen than anything else, more questions than answers.

“I really like this team,” Matta said Monday during the team’s media day. “But there are so many unknowns. We have to get into it and see what happens and how things shake out. There are some pieces here.”

The first time Matta had to rebuild with youth was two years ago, when freshmen Greg Oden, Michael Conley and Daequan Cook led the Buckeyes to the national championship game where they lost to Florida. Then all three left early for the NBA.

A year ago, with the trio and several other players gone, Matta built a team around senior Jamar Butler and freshman 7-foot post player Kosta Koufos and a few other young, interchangeable parts. They ended up going 24-13, missing out on an NCAA tournament berth but going on to win the National Invitation Tournament.

Now Butler and two other frontline players — Othello Hunter and Matt Terwilliger — have graduated. Koufos jumped to the pros (Utah Jazz). And Matta is left with eight new faces, seven of them freshmen and sophomores. Only one scholarship recruit (David Lighty) was around even for that oh-so-recent NCAA title game.

“I guess you could say with so many people leaving my freshman year and then so many people leaving last year and then so many new people coming in this year, it is kind of like three different teams,” said Lighty, the elder statesman of the team with just two years on campus.

Matta, like just about everyone else, doesn’t have any idea what to expect.

“There are a lot of new, young guys with a lack of experience,” he said. “It’s like I told a group of freshmen the other day: ‘I don’t have a drill … we can dedicate to getting you experience. You’re going to have to go through the wars.”‘

Give the Buckeyes this much, they do have talented personnel on paper.

The roster includes two McDonald’s All-Americans in Ohio Mr. Basketball William Buford, 6-5 from Toledo, and 7-0 post player B.J. Mullens from suburban Columbus. Several scouting services tabbed Mullens — who is an inch taller than Oden was as an incoming freshman — as the nation’s top recruit among big men.

The Buckeyes also will enlist the help of recruits Anthony Crater (Flint, Mich.) and Walter Offutt (Indianapolis). Matta also signed a pair of junior-college transfers, Jeremie Simmons (Chicago) and Nikola Kecman, a sophomore from Belgrade, Serbia. Kecman, (pronounced KETZ’-muhn) is awaiting word from the NCAA regarding his eligibility after he reportedly played for a club team in his homeland which may have included professionals.

Those are just the newcomers. The veterans include three juniors: Lighty, a 6-5 defensive specialist, 6-9 former Vanderbilt transfer Kyle Madsen, and holdover point guard P.J. Hill.

Hill said there’s no reason why the young Bucks can’t win the Big Ten and go to the NCAA tournament.

“It’s definitely reasonable,” he said. “Young is no longer an excuse. We know how hard we work, and when the season comes, everybody else will know.”

The sophomore class features returning starter 6-7 Evan Turner, along with two others who saw considerable action: 6-8 Dallas Lauderdale and 6-6 Jon Diebler. Diebler was Ohio’s Mr. Basketball in 2007 and Lauderdale has honed his once-soft physique until his body-fat percentage has been cut in half to 8.8 percent.

Lauderdale, who could make a power-packed duo with Mullens underneath, said the Buckeyes can force their will on people.

“In my mind, I’m just that confident. It’s not cockiness, it’s just bold,” he said. “I really see the only team beating us is ourselves.”

Turner, who ended up averaging 8.5 points a game while starting 30 times, said he’s not afraid to predict big things for the team.

“You can say, ‘Expect the unexpected,”‘ he said.

Matta said it is frustrating and tiring to have to rebuild a team so often, regardless of the talent on hand.

“But it’s something you have to deal with,” he said. “You’d like to think with no seniors on the team that next year at this time we’re going to be talking about the exact same group of guys. … But you never know.”

But Matta does know. After all, some NBA Web sites have already projected the 264-pound Mullens as one of the top picks in next spring’s draft.

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