Posted: 11/1/06 Section: Sports

Last season was not a great one for Big Ten basketball. No team in the league won more than 26 games, six teams made the NCAA Tournament, and all were headed home before the first weekend had ended. In the conference tournament, only one team reached 70 points in a game.

Needless to say, things could have gone better.

This year, they should.

With the arrival of stud recruit/man-child Greg Oden at Ohio State, the Big Ten has added some flash and flair. The losses of senior leaders at Iowa, Michigan State and Illinois will give the league some unpredictability and the recruiting war between Illinois and Indiana will give the Big Ten a much-needed rivalry.

Ohio State will enter the year as preseason conference favorites as they attempt to defend their surprising regular-season title from last year.

The Buckeyes lost four key players from last season to graduation, but head coach Thad Matta's top-ranked recruiting class should keep the Bucks on top of the league.

"We have a tremendous challenge ahead of us because we are so young," Matta was quoted in an Associated Press story. "We have a lot of new guys and a short time to figure out what we can and can't do without sacrificing teaching the fundamentals."

In addition to the Buckeyes, perennial contenders Wisconsin and Michigan State are also expected to be in the top tier of the conference.

The Badgers return, arguably, the best player not named Oden in the league in senior forward Alando Tucker. Tucker is the only player from last season's first or second all-Big Ten teams to return to school.

Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan said in an Associated Press article Tucker has done a lot of work on his game recently - and its beginning to pay off.

"Tucker's still (going to be) tough to stop," he said, adding that Tucker's developing outside game will make him even harder to stop. "In order to be a good perimeter shooter you can't shoot line drives and he's worked on that and looked pretty good."

Continued...

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