College basketball: OSU recruit rides dreams for Olympics to Greece
Friday, June 8, 2007 3:39 AM
By Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Kosta Koufos will try to fit in with not one team but two this summer.
Koufos, the 7-foot-2, 260-pound centerpiece of Ohio State's 2007 basketball recruiting class, starts school June 18. He will begin playing in open gyms with his new teammates almost immediately.
A month later, though, Koufos will head overseas, to his mother's homeland, to practice and play with the Greek national team.
"I've got a good possibility of playing in the Olympics next year, hopefully," he said. He will be the biggest player on both his new teams. "The tallest," he clarified, "but probably not the most muscular."
Improving his strength and conditioning has consumed Koufos this spring. He said he is training three times a day, in one form or another, to prepare himself for a more physical game in college. His forte at the high school level was his skill for his size, not his strength.
"I worked hard before but not as efficiently as I am now," he said.
Ohio State returns 6-9 Othello Hunter and 6-8 Matt Terwilliger inside next season and adds Koufos and 6-10 transfer Kyle Madsen of Dublin Coffman and 6-9 freshman Dallas Lauderdale.
"I think he's going to get a good feel early on for the size and that sort of stuff that he's going to have to go against," coach Thad Matta said of Koufos.
Koufos is not the only Ohio State men's basketball player hoping to compete overseas this summer. Sophomore David Lighty is scheduled to try out for USA Basketball's 19-and-under team June 28-30 in Dallas. The team will play in the FIBA U19 world championship July 12-22 in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Lighty was more efficient on offense in the NCAA Tournament than earlier in the season and will be expected to build on that performance going into next season.
"He's a tremendous defender," Matta said, "but the biggest thing he did as the season wound down was take care of the ball. I thought he was playing his best basketball at the end of the year."