20) 2006 Ohio State Buckeyes
Looking back, this Ohio State team is not as celebrated as they should be or should have been. Maybe it’s because injuries cut Greg Oden‘s NBA career short or maybe because they lost in the national championship game? Regardless, this recruiting class was a dominant one for the Buckeyes.
Led by three five-star recruits in Oden, Daequan Cook and Mike Conley Jr., Ohio State went 35-4 during the 2006-07 NCAA season, with two of those losses coming to eventual back-to-back national champion Florida.
The other two losses came at North Carolina and at Wisconsin (who were ranked No. 6 and No. 4 in the country, respectively), as they swept both the Big Ten regular-season and tournament championships.
Though each member of that five-star trio only stayed for one season, they racked up the individual honors to go along with their team success. Oden was a consensus All-American, Conley was also an All-Big Ten performer and Cook was named the conference’s Sixth Man of the Year.
Oden went on to be the No. 1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft to the Portland Trail Blazers, but Conley is the one who has turned in the most successful NBA career to this point, having been the starting point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies up until this past offseason.
David Lighty, another member of the freshman class, stayed in Columbus for five seasons. He started every game he played in following that freshman season (he only started seven games that year) and became a leader for the Buckeyes. Ohio State also swept the Big Ten Championship honors in 2010 and 2011 with Lighty leading the way.