The Ohio State basketball program may lose Kaleb Wesson this offseason, but does that immediately make them not a top-25 team in the nation after being in the top five earlier in the 2019-2020 season?
NBC Sports thinks so, and while losing far more than just Wesson, it did pull in some pretty good pieces via the transfer market and should be more healthy than this previous year. Most projections have Ohio State still easily in the top 25 as an early look ahead, but no, not NBC Sports. The Buckeyes will have to prove themselves again.
At least with three inbound four-star recruits to start last season and then the returning of Wesson, the team was able to get started ranked No. 18 in the AP Poll.
This time, NBC Sports has them ranked as the sixth-best Big Ten team.
“Just” missing the cut, columnist Rob Dauster placed Michigan State at No. 5, Iowa at No. 9, Wisconsin at No. 14, Rutgers at No. 19, and finally Michigan at No. 20. Villanova — a team Ohio State beat by 20-plus last season — took the No. 1 spot.
Ohio State and Indiana were the two Big Ten teams to barely miss the cut.
Ohio State basketball's Thad-Five ranked one of top 25 recruiting classes of the one-and-done era https://t.co/o6lYor47DP
— Buckeyes Wire (@BuckeyesWire) May 21, 2020
They label C.J. Walker, Duane Washington, Seth Towns, E.J. Liddell, and Kyle Young as the team’s projected starters. If this team is going to succeed, they’ll need more from Washington and Walker to go along with a strong presence from Towns, a grad transfer.
However, hope is there for this team, but it’ll be a unit that certainly will need to prove itself before sliding up in rankings.