Greg Oden Is NCAA Basketball Star
Ohio State basketball looks great with freshmen, Oden and Mike Conley
With celebrated freshmen Greg Oden and Mike Conley, Jr., Ohio State basketball is beginning to look as powerful as the school's well-known football program.
Ohio State basketball center Greg Oden has made just 10 of 21 attempts from the free throw line this year. This very Shaq-like percentage won’t get the kind of attention the freshman is used to receiving.
That is, until you realize that the right-handed Oden is shooting his freebies with his left hand, due to a cast he’s wearing on his healing right wrist.
Oden, the most celebrated freshman to come along in quite some time, has done everything else very well, in his first three games with the Ohio State basketball team, including hitting 17 straight field goals at one point.
The numbers for this young superstar in waiting are, in fact, quite remarkable. Ohio State basketball coach Thad Matta has brought his big man along very slowly, as the highly-rated Buckeyes hammer away at some very weak early-season competition.
Greg Oden has taken 71 minutes worth of baby steps, and you’ll have to excuse this warped analogy for a man standing seven feet tall and weighing 280 pounds. In these minutes, Oden, wrapped wrist and all, has scored 44 points, grabbed 25 rebounds (9 offensive) and swatted away 13 shots.
The comparisons are pouring in faster than daily lottery results. Greg Oden is being called by many experts the next Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan, among others.
Although comparing Oden to former and current greats is certainly the sexy thing to do, it’s a bit bizarre, when you remember that you could fit the minutes Oden has played into one of those super-sized episodes of Survivor.
Greg Oden, nonetheless, appears to be the real deal, and no matter which aforementioned star he eventually mimics most, Oden makes the Ohio State basketball team a national title contender right now.
Of course, the Buckeyes are no one-freshman show. Dishing the ball to Oden and a host of other young stars is Oden’s high school teammate Mike Conley, Jr.
Since we’re making comparisons, Conley is to Oden what Steve Nash is to Amare Stoudamire.
Conley may not get the national attention Oden gets, but in the long run, it may be Conley who carries Ohio State basketball deep into March.
This freshman point guard plays at the pace of a young Gary Payton. Conley is averaging 9 points, 6.5 assists and better than 2.5 steals per game. In just 10 games, Conley already looks like one of the best point guards in the nation.
And Greg Oden is still hobbled with injury.
When Oden is cast-free and the other promising freshmen, Daequan Cook and David Lighty, learn to mesh with upperclassmen Ron Lewis, Ivan Harris and Othello Hunter, it may be Conley who is the Freshman of the Year in the Big Ten.
If this happens, Greg Oden will most likely have to settle for being the top player taken in the 2007 NBA Draft.
And he just might take a Player of the Year award and a National Title with him.
