The Lantern

Issue date: 5/29/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: File photo

Jessica Davenport and the Buckeye women's basketball team helped make OSU the cream of the Big Ten crop in 2006-07.

If there was a Big Ten tournament for "rock, paper, scissors," Ohio State would win. This weekend, the OSU baseball team won the Big Ten tournament, capping off an amazing year of Buckeye athletics in the conference. Despite the early exits of many OSU athletic teams in the NCAA tournament, this academic year of OSU sports will go down as one of the best ever.

OSU sports teams won a combined 12 conference championships in nine different sports. This led the Big Ten conference, with Minnesota coming in second with five titles in five sports. No other team had more than three championships. After a record-setting season in 2005-06 - when OSU became the first Big Ten team to win conference championships in football, men's basketball and women's basketball - this year's teams repeated the feat and won each title outright.

Other than the three major sports, the OSU men's volleyball, tennis and gymnastics teams won conference tournaments or regular season championships, as well as the OSU women's field hockey and softball teams. The number of great teams at OSU cannot be matched by any other college in the country. To have this many championships in nine different sports is something to be proud of.

In the past few years at OSU, winning has become just as much of a tradition as dotting the "i" at football games. Of the nine sports teams that were conferences champions, five (football, men's and women's basketball, tennis and men's gymnastics) all defended their championships from one year ago, creating a dynasty in their respective sports.

"The Program" is what Sports Illustrated called OSU on the cover of its March 5 edition. Even though it was Florida that won the national championships, it is the history of excellence over a prolonged period of time that makes the Buckeyes the best.

Too often people are concerned with what teams have done recently. Fortunately for OSU fans, the Buckeyes have recorded success in nearly every sport, both in the present and the past.

OSU has seen players from six different sports get drafted into the pros this year, including the No. 9 pick overall in football (Ted Ginn Jr.), the No. 2 pick overall in the WNBA (Jessica Davenport) and the future No. 1 overall pick in the NBA (Greg Oden). OSU players from many sports have been named to All-American teams, and Columbus is the home to this year's Heisman Trophy winner.

Director of Athletics Gene Smith will have to rent out fired Michigan coach Tommy Amaker's office to have a place for all the trophies OSU has won this year. To make room, Smith can just take some empty Coke bottles and the NIT championship trophy out of Amaker's office to the plastics recycling bin.

Looking back on a year full of triumph and success, Gatorade-dumping and picture-posing with conference championship trophies, this was easily one of the best years of athletic success for any school in the history of the NCAA throughout an entire program.

What will next season hold for OSU? Many people think the Buckeyes have lost so many great players this season that it may be hard for them to duplicate the success they had in 2006-07. To them I say, never count a Buckeye team out.

Josh Ellis can be reached at ellis.319@osu.edu.

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