The class -- Oden, Conley, Cook and Lighty -- has been tabbed the Thad Five; never mind it's still a quartet. OSU has seven scholarships available for '06, and may use up to six of them. The Buckeyes will likely add a power forward or another center to back up Oden and take the 7-footer's place in the starting lineup once he turns pro.

Matta had an assist in pulling the class together from Conley, the son of 1992 Olympic triple-jump champion Mike Conley. As Oden's omnipresent right-hand-man -- at Lawrence North High, on the Spiece Indy Heat AAU team and at ABCD, where he displayed skill as a passer and ambidextrous shooter in the lane -- Conley has plenty of influence on the blue-chip center. "Once Mike started to want to go [to Ohio State], I knew I wanted to go there, too," Oden said.

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Credit Matta for selling Conley on OSU, impressing the young floor general by attending Lawrence North's sectional championship game March 5, then driving back to Columbus late that evening to knock off No. 1 Illinois the next day. "I watched him coach that game against Illinois, I was amazed to see how he handled himself," Conley said. "Normal coaches would jump around and go crazy -- he tried to stay cool and act like he had done it before."

With this heralded crop of recruits, Matta won't be sneaking up on anyone -- and with Oden likely to be one-and-done, there will be a sense of immediacy to make a tournament run. Cook, a two-guard whose shooting talents have kept him from being overshadowed by his AAU teammates Oden and Conley, is aware of the pressure awaiting in Columbus. "I'm very excited," Cook said at the camp Wednesday, "but there's going to be a lot expected of us when we get there."

Conley and Oden were just as wary of the Fab Five/Thad Five label. "I don't really like it that much -- I'd rather just go to college and be able to play ball," Conley said. "We've got to focus even harder, though, because everyone's comparing us."

The ever-modest Oden -- who regularly insists he's not the best player on the floor, despite visual evidence to the contrary said, "I don't think we're there yet [at a Fab Five level]. ... We haven't even finished our last year of high school."

While the Buckeyes' future foursome worry about the weight of expectations, there is one other concern: whether or not the program will be eligible for the NCAA tournament in the 2006-07 season. All the people involved in the O'Brien scandal are gone from OSU -- the coaches, the athletic director and the players -- and the school voluntarily barred itself from the '04-05 postseason, but the NCAA's official ruling on OSU's penalty won't be revealed until this fall. Oden said the coaches told him it "most likely won't affect our class' postseason" -- but the possibility remains. It is the only cloud still lingering from the mess that created Matta's job opening, and something upon which he would rather not dwell.

"What's happened, happened, and nobody involved with our program now had anything to do with it," Matta said Wednesday. "We're just focused on the future -- and we think the future is going to be in good shape."

One year ago, had Matta made that last statement at his introductory press conference in Columbus, it could've easily been dismissed as run-of-the-mill, optimistic coach-speak. But with Oden and Co. running on the hardwood below at ABCD, and the Buckeye program reinvigorated with hope, when Matta spoke of the future, he was speaking the truth.

Luke Winn covers college sports for SI.com.