ESPN’s Pat Forde is already out with his pre-season top 25, and he has the Buckeyes ranked #2 behind Texas. His reasoning is pretty simple - “Did you see Troy Smith, Ted Ginn and Antonio Pittman carve up Notre Dame in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl?” If Vince Young leaves for the NFL, we might see the Buckeyes ranked #1 to start the season.

Here’s one thing I don’t like about this new non-Hughes lineup. Damon BLEEPING Jones being in the starting lineup, hoisting 7 three pointers, missing 6 of them, and those are his only shots in 33 minutes. That’s bad. Real bad. It’s an argument that the non-Hughes Cavs need to NOT START Damon Jones.

Is anyone else not really seeing that much difference between the Cavs team in the last two games, and the Cavs team with Larry Hughes? They’ve won one, lost one, the defense seems a bit better, even.

Ok, I like the fact that the Cavs are capable of a strong 4th quarter run at a big deficit, regularly, but I’m hoping they get over the hump regularly, too. Just like the NJ game, last night against Houston, the Cavs cut a big 4th qtr deficit down to almost nothing…but came up short.

The Buckeyes continue to roll as they push their unbeaten streak to 11 games with a 104-69 win over Penn State.

Lewis led the way for OSU with 26 points and Sullinger had 18 points. The two combined to go 18-19 from the field as OSU torched Penn State by shooting over 65% from the field.

Thad Matta has this team playing excellent basketball and they are taking care of business, which is what good teams do. What is even more important is how the bench is playing in games like this. It’s against the Penn States of the world where you can develop your bench to step up in the clutch, and if OSU is going to make a run in the Big Ten and be competitive in the tourney, they will need that bench. The experience and contributions they are making now are going to pay big dividends for them come tourney time.