Now that the nets have been cut, the t-shirts printed and the dust settled on this year's basketball season, it's time for a tradition unlike any other. No, not some stupid golf tournament. I'm talking about the looking to next season, and the proliferation of Top 25 lists for next year's basketball season. We did one of these for football, after all.
Obviously, these can change significantly. There are still several top players who have yet to commit in next year's basketball class, and we don't know everybody who will transfer or leave for the NBA draft. Based on what is known though, several major publications have published their lists, and Ohio State is conspicuously absent from...well, almost all of them.
Not only that, but ESPN's Joe Lunardi published his first Bracket projection for next season, and Ohio State didn't even make the tournament at all (they were in his First Four Out).
Ohio State missed the SI Top 25. They didn't make the SB Nation one either. Or the USA TODAY version. Or the CBS Sports. Or The Sporting News. Only The Big Lead and CBS' Jon Rothstein listed Ohio State, as a potential Top 25 team for next season, with the Buckeyes clocking in at #24 on both lists. And while it is possible that I missed one out there, the other major lists didn't even have Ohio State as a team that was just outside the cusp of the Top 25 either.
That doesn't mean that there aren't other Big Ten teams getting love from the press though. The consensus best team in the Big Ten, at least at this point in the stupid-early preseason, is Maryland, who is getting a lot of Top Five love. It's easy to see why, as they retain the core of their team from 2014-2015 (Melo Trimble, Jake Layman, etc), but also add Georgia Tech transfer Robert Carter and five star super-center Diamond Stone. The Terps will have size, shooting, and will have one of the best starting fives in the entire country. It's easy to see them occupying the spot that Wisconsin did in the conference for next year.
The Terps are the consensus favorite, but there are other teams showing up in multiple lists as well. Indiana could also be in the Top 10/15 range should everyone return, as they were a very young team that just added Thomas Bryant to address their glaring size issues. Michigan State, paced by Denzel Valentine, is also a regular Top 15 preseason pick. Wisconsin and Michigan (especially if LaVert returns) made nearly every other Top 25, and Purdue and Illinois crept into a few lists, if only as an also-receiving-votes candidate.
We're a long way away from a formal Big Ten preseason poll, but if you were to take a flash poll among national writers now, it looks like Ohio State would be slotted somewhere between fifth and seventh.
That's relatively new territory for Ohio State, a squad that has been a mainstay in the NCAA tournament over the past several seasons, as well as the top four slots in preseason NCAA polls. Why the drop?
It's not hard to see why, given that Ohio State won't have a senior on next year's roster unless they bring in a graduate transfer, and boasts only a single upperclassman at all. There is a ton of talent, given Ohio State's back-to-back top ten recruiting classes, and now there projects to be some semblance of roster balance, but it's all very young, and mostly very green.
Ohio State has the raw pieces in place to easily get back into the Top 25 and to compete for a strong Big Ten Tournament seed, but it's also not hard to understand why some writers might be skeptical. Beating Maryland may be very tough next year, but the Buckeyes have the potential to make many writers regret not buying into Ohio State a little earlier in the season. If the team isn't healthy though, or if the learning curve for the youngsters is steep, it's also easy to see Ohio State falling down the table, especially if the middle tier of the league rebounds next season.
It's not an ideal situation to be in. Only time can tell if Ohio State can prove the experts wrong for next year.