Men's Basketball
The Ohio State men's basketball team has played in 10 NCAA Final Fours, winning the championship in 1960, when they were led by Basketball Hall of Famers Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, and Bob Knight off the bench. A Buckeye has been named first team All American 23 times, including five two-time All Americans and one three-time All American. Between 1960 and 1964 Ohio State won five consecutive Big Ten championships, an achievement that has yet to be matched.
In 2004, The Ohio State University fired men's basketball coach Jim O'Brien for recruiting violations and self-imposed a one year penalty, including a ban on post-season play and reduction of scholarships. In light of these University self-imposed penalties, the NCAA Division I Committee on infractions merely placed The Ohio State University on three years probation for the violations, and gave heavier penalties to Coach O'Brien and a former assistant coach. The lightness of this judgment was seen as encouragement for schools to be proactive in responding to violations. Nevertheless, O'Brien successfully sued Ohio State for improper termination. Thad Matta, the current coach of the Buckeyes, took over O'Brien's spot in 2004. Ohio State recruited such talents as Greg Oden, and Mike Conley, Jr. to start the 2006-2007 year. The Buckeyes finished the season with a 27-3 record; won the Big Ten tournament, and earned a number 1 seed for the NCAA tournament. After a very close game with state rival Xavier, and a thrilling 20 point come from behind victory against the Tennessee Volunteers, the Buckeyes managed to hold off Georgetown Hoyas 67-60 to reach the Championship Game for the first time since 1962, which they lost to defending NCAA champions Florida Gators, 84-75. The Buckeyes ended the 2006-2007 season with a record of 35-4. In the 2009-2010 Season, the Buckeyes won the Big Ten Championship. In the 2010-2011 season the Buckeyes won the regular season Big Ten Championship, and the Big Ten Tournament Championship going 32-2 overall, and winning 20 straight home games, receiving honors of the #1 overall seed in the NCAA March Madness Tournament in the East Region. The Buckeyes were defeated by the University of Kentucky in the Sweet 16, 62-60. On December 10, 2011, the Buckeyes stepped into Allen Fieldhouse, without the top-ranked player in the country Jared Sullinger, and narrowly lost to the Kansas Jayhawks 78-67.
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Famous quotes containing the words men and/or basketball:
“Ancient of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone—glimmering through the dream of things that were.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)