Best Ohio player & best Ohio State basketball player

[LitlBuck]

Living in the Columbus area the best H.S. basketball players I've personally seen play:
Michael Redd (West H.S.)
Drew Lavender (Brookhaven)
Ron Lewis (Brookhaven)
Brandon Foust (Brookhaven)

...and I hope to see Jared this fall!

You must be a young pup. Back in the 60s, there was a Columbus East team that had three guys on it named Nick Connor, Ed Ratliff, and Bo Lamar who all went to major Division I programs and during their high school days they were far better than the players that you have mentioned. In addition, Estabaum Weaver was probably the best high school player ever in Columbus but he was it his own worst enemy. While in high school, Kenny Gregory, who went to Kansas, was considered a better high school player than Redd.

John Havlicek?

Hondo was a great team player in college but was not a dominant player like Lucas or Special K or even Jim Jackson. In my opinion, Hondo was a better professional basketball player than he was while he was attending Ohio State.

 

[Buckskin86]

For the Buckeyes, Ohio is at the heart of all that basketball talent
Published: Saturday, February 26, 2011
By Doug Lesmerises, The Plain Dealer

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- On the AAU team known as All-Ohio Red they made their mark, winning national championships and spreading the word on Ohio basketball, led by four future Ohio State Buckeyes in Jared Sullinger, Aaron Craft, Jordan Sibert and J.D. Weatherspoon.

"People thought we were pretty good," Sullinger said. "Everyone still considers Ohio a football state, but at the same time, we were trying to elevate and it and let everyone know it's not only football. We can do both."

When the No. 2 Buckeyes take the court now, as they will against Indiana Sunday afternoon, they do it as their own version of All-Ohio.

The top six players are Ohio natives, something OSU coach and Illinois native Thad Matta has mentioned repeatedly this year. Despite Matta's deserved reputation as a recruiter, his formula for success this season wasn't much more complicated than taking advantage of what has been a run of elite in-state talent.

For the first time since 1993, all of the Buckeyes' starters are from Ohio. Among the teams currently ranked in the Associated Press top 25, only the Buckeyes have their top six players in minutes all coming from their home state. Only nine of the top 25 teams have at least three players among their top six from their home state; 10 have one or none.

St. Edward coach Eric Flannery, who has worked with USA Basketball for more than a decade, said in that time only California and Texas have produced upper-tier talent more consistently than Ohio. And he's glad to see it stick around.

"The ACC has always been a big pull for a lot of kids, and sometimes I think being close to home doesn't seem like as big of a deal," Flannery said, "but now that Ohio State has been up there as a national championship-caliber program, you have to think that's started to win over the kids in Ohio, and I hope that continues to be true. And I think you're seeing that with some other Division I colleges in Ohio, like Xavier and Cleveland State and Kent State."

Cont..

http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2011/02/for_the_buckeyes_ohio_is_at_th.html

 

[Falcon7]

Lucas, was the best OSU player ever.
But don't forget about:
Gary Bradds.
He was National Player of the Yearhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Bradds#cite_note-4 and winner of the Adolph Rupp Trophy in 1964. He veraged 28.0 points and 13.0 rebounds as a junior, after replacing Lucas. Averaged 30.6 points and 13.4 rebounds as a senior. Had six consecutive 40 point games his senior year,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Bradds#cite_note-5 including a school record 49 against Illinois (2/10/64).
From what I understand Fred Taylor would not play Lucas and Bradds together (Bradds soph year) for some stupid reason.
Lucas once said that Bradds was the best player he ever played against all season "and that was in practice".

 

[Buckskin86]

Commentary
Basketball lineage in Ohio rivals football
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The Columbus Dispatch

Two-thirds of Ohio was once covered by glaciers. Ten thousand years ago, the receding ice flattened the land and, lo and behold, we had football fields. The pioneers chalked out some lines and Ohio became what is commonly known as a "football state." It was an organic development.

Here and there, though, rogue farmers hung hoops on their barns (just as they do in Indiana!) and asphalt went down in the big cities, where some humans rose up from the four-point position to stick jumpers, and, eventually, dunk. Oh, the humanity.

Ohio became as much a basketball state as a football state, secularly, if not religiously, for good or ill.

Exhibit A is Thee Ohio State University, so often hailed and derided, in equal measures, as a football factory. The Buckeyes (34-2) are the No.1 overall seed in this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament, which, according to Middletown native Jerry Lucas, "is the greatest event in American sports."

Lucas is not denigrating spring practice. No, he is just a basketball guy from Ohio, one of the greatest players of all time, a member of the last Ohio State national championship team, in 1960. He and his kind are deriving extra enjoyment from this year's tournament.

They tend to keep a low profile, these hoops aficionados. Around here, their game is an institutional afterthought. Big boys are supposed to wear pads and block, and the fast ones are supposed to hit holes and run routes, you know?

Mel Nowell, a Columbus native and another member of that 1960 national title team, likes to think we're all more rounded of mind. He notes that basketball has always been played at a high level, from Martins Ferry to Oxford, from the Ohio River to Lake Erie.

"Ohio has more than its share of great basketball players," Nowell said. "Always has."

Those Buckeyes who went to three national championship games, and won one, in the early 1960s were nearly all Ohioans. Shoot, eight were from Columbus.

This year's OSU roster is of similar constitution: Jared Sullinger (Columbus), David Lighty (Cleveland), Jon Diebler (Upper Sandusky), Aaron Craft (Findlay), William Buford (Toledo) and Dallas Lauderdale (Solon) are Ohioans all, as are reserves Jordan Sibert (Cincinnati) and Eddie Days (Richmond Heights).

"We take that to heart, us growing up in the state and knowing about Ohio State and the tradition that it has since day one," Lighty said.

Sullinger said, "This is an Ohio pride team right now."

Cont...

http://www.dispatch.com/live/conten...-lineage-in-ohio-rivals-football.html?sid=101