INDIANAPOLIS -- There was something very close to celebration by Ohio State at Conseco Fieldhouse on Friday afternoon. It had little -- very little -- to do with actual basketball.
The Buckeyes left the building with their school on the hook for what could be more than $10 million in restitution to the NCAA and its former basketball coach.
A year after removing itself from the NCAA Tournament, the school was sweating out a second-consecutive NCAA-imposed ban Friday that could have wrecked a recruiting class and perhaps driven its coach to Indiana.
"A blatant violation," said NCAA infractions committee vice chair Josephine Potuto, summarizing the school's long, arduous extra benefits case involving two international recruits.
"Especially troubling," she added.
Celebration? The NCAA announced an hour before game time at the Big Ten Tournament that Ohio State had escaped major sanctions. After the Bucks' quarterfinal victory over Penn State, a savvy broker could have scalped confetti.
Reality was hidden in a corner. The school that is tied for the fifth-most major infractions in NCAA history -- same as Alabama, one more than Notre Dame -- got Big Haircut No. 4.
Except the NCAA stowed the guillotine this time. Oh, there's plenty of dirt -- a massive 64 pages of it in the infractions report -- but Ohio State got to keep its head.
For those of you Bucknuts who didn't have the time or interest in sifting through it all, let's summarize: Your Big Ten champs are free to go to the NCAA Tournament, possibly as a No. 1 seed, while looking forward to perhaps the best recruiting class since Michigan's Fab Five.
You get to keep second-year coach Thad Matta, who made rumblings about bolting for his dream job at Indiana if the NCAA dropped the hammer.
That's all that really matters, right?
Why, though, does this keep happening to Ohio State? This makes two major basketball cases in 12 years. This latest one features $6,000 paid to a foreign recruit by former coach Jim O'Brien.
But the report also includes the $500 quarterback Troy Smith took from a booster. There's almost $14,000 in free or discounted orthodontic care for five women's basketball players. The obvious conclusion: Ohio State had better teeth than institutional control.
