Crafting a lasting legacy
BIG TEN OHIO STATE’S AARON CRAFT
Aaron Craft plays his final home game for the Buckeyes on Sunday. He and fellow senior Lenzelle Smith Jr. will be recognized before the game against Michigan State in Value City Arena. It will be a moment to capture for posterity.
In the long history of Ohio State basketball, there have been few like Craft. He shares the Big Ten record for career steals. He holds the school career record for assists. He is the first player in the history of the program to be named a first-team Academic AllAmerican three times.
He has done as much community service — visiting hospital patients, speaking to schoolchildren, even taking a mission trip to Haiti — as his schedule has allowed. All of it has resonated. “It’s a really unique dynamic,” said Clark Kellogg, the Big Ten’s most valuable player at Ohio State in 1982. “He’ll go down as one of the mostpopular and accomplished student-athletes in the history of the program.” Another former player, Mel Nowell, said he has not seen another player since he wore the uniform more than 50 years ago “who has gathered the amount of admiration that this young man has at our university.”
Nowell was a member of what is still the most-revered class of Ohio State basketball players in history. He started with Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek on teams that won the NCAA tournament in 1960 and reached the title game again in ’61 and ’62.
The only player who would rival Craft’s mass appeal was Havlicek, Nowell said, and for the same reason: their mentality.
“He hardly ever gave up on a play,” Nowell said. “Not that others gave up, but John went that extra mile, just as you see Craft do.
“He’s relentless. The kid can be tired, you know he’s tired, and he still will find something inside himself that will give you an effort that is extremely difficult to give. That reminds me of John.”
Craft and Havlicek have not met — “That’s on my bucket list,” Craft said — but they made similar first impressions at Ohio State.
Havlicek did not start his first game but started every one after that.
Craft came off the bench in all but one game as a freshman, but his defensive chops got him on the court for an average of nearly 30 minutes per game for a 2010-11 team that ended the regular reason ranked No. 1 nationally and finished 343. He was voted the Big Ten’s sixth man of the year.
“I have watched him on TV,” Havlicek said, “and he certainly gives a lot of energy to the team.”
Craft-worship is not universal, of course. He has his detractors, especially this season, with the Buckeyes having lost nearly as many Big Ten games as they’ve won and Craft sometimes prone to costly late-game turnovers because he is trying too hard to make a difference for a team that lacks a clutch scorer.
And as the menace on defense he has been for four years, opposing fans hate him. Iowa students booed and jeered him every time he touched the ball on Feb. 4. He never acknowledges such noise during or after a game because he doesn’t want any opponent to know that they entered his head. That night, he let his 17 points, six assists and six steals do his talking in Ohio State’s upset win.
At home, though, Craft’s supporters make up a decided majority. The only other Ohio State basketball player who might have come close to Craft’s mass appeal in a four-year career on campus might have been Katie Smith, another smalltown (Logan, Ohio) product who went on to become one of the greatest players in WNBA history.
It’s possible that, in the past 50 years, maybe only a handful of Ohio State football players have been bigger men on campus than Craft, none more so than two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin.
“Archie’s like the flag at Ohio State,” joked former basketball standout Bill Hosket.
But if that’s the case, Kellogg added, “Aaron’s one of the stars on the flag.”