Austin Parks is No. 11 in our Ohio State men's basketball preseason power rankings

adam jardy, columbus dispatch

Thu, Nov 2, 2023, 12:40 AM·5 min read

Men’s basketball season is about to get underway, and it’s time to dive into the Ohio State roster.

After a 16-19 record that caused the Buckeyes to miss the postseason for the first time in coach Chris Holtmann’s six seasons with the program, Ohio State returns several key core players while adding a highly rated freshman class and a three-man transfer group all expected to make significant impacts.

To get ready for the season, The Dispatch is once again rolling out its annual preseason power rankings. Each day leading into the Nov. 6 season opener with Oakland, we will count upward while projecting which players will have the biggest roles on the 2023-24 season. This isn’t just a measurement of who will lead the team in any particular statistical category, but a series of educated guesses on which players’ contributions will go the longest way toward where the Buckeyes finish.

The series continues today with first-year center Austin Parks.

No. 11 – Austin Parks

Position: Center

Eligibility: First year (three remaining)

Height/weight: 6 feet 10 / 260 pounds

Jersey number: 25

Major: Business

Oct 19, 2023; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes center Austin Parks (25) signs autographs during an open practice at Value City Arena.

Background

A three-star prospect in the 247Sports.com composite rankings, Parks committed to Ohio State during his junior season in a ceremony held inside his school's auditorium. Ohio and Toledo were his first scholarship offers, but Ohio State, Indiana, West Virginia, Michigan State, Dayton and Illinois, among others, all followed suit in June after his sophomore season at St. Marys (Ohio) Memorial. He picked the Buckeyes ahead of Indiana and West Virginia, his two other finalists.

When he committed, Parks was ranked as the No. 18 center in the nation and the No. 6 prospect from Ohio according to 247Sports while ESPN ranked him as a four-star prospect. After helping the Roughriders reach the regional finals as a junior, Parks was sidelined by a knee injury suffered during AAU basketball that would cost him most of the summer. That led to a slide in the recruiting rankings, but he still averaged 22.4 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.8 blocks while earning first team All-State honors as a senior. He set 13 school records including career points (1,528), career rebounds (645), points in a game (45) and career wins (71).

Parks arrived at Ohio State as the 28 center in his class, the No. 5 player from Ohio and a three-star prospect in the 247Sports rankings.

Need to know

Originally born in Texas, Parks has claim to both the Dallas-Fort Worth area and to Ohio. His mom, Shari, is from Texas, but the family moved to Ohio when he was 2 and he’s lived there ever since. She was a collegiate athlete, too, having played volleyball at UT Arlington. Parks took an official visit to Ohio State on Feb. 6, 2022, and saw the Buckeyes beat Maryland, 82-67. Prior to that, he had taken multiple unofficial visits to the program and was on hand for a football game against Tulsa on Sept. 18, 2021.

After each game during Parks’ senior season, coach Dan Hegemier said he would sign autographs for kids who would wait around. He set the all-time school scoring record on a dunk in a Jan. 24 game at Coldwater. Ohio State associate coach Jake Diebler was his primary recruiter. Parks participated in the Ohio-Kentucky All-Star game and the OHSBCA North/South game, where he went against onetime Ohio State commitment and eventual Michigan signee George Washington III. Parks was in the same conference as Colin White, an Ohio State commitment in the 2024 class.

In May, he threw the ceremonial first pitch for St. Marys’ Little League season.

2023-24 season outlook

Ohio State fans clamoring for coach Chris Holtmann to add more frontcourt size got a big dose of what they had been hoping for with the addition of Parks. The heaviest player on the roster, Parks is just one inch shorter than Felix Okpara but outweighs the second-year center by 30 pounds. Parks was highly coveted by Michigan State’s Tom Izzo and Indiana’s Mike Woodson, and keeping him in-state was a priority for the Buckeyes.

He brings a Big Ten-ready body who should be able to at least handle a couple of minutes against some of the league’s physical bigs. The biggest thing holding Parks back is that he has missed time during the summer and the preseason due to various minor injuries, the most recent of which were back spasms that held him out for the first week or so of the preseason. All first-year bigs deal with a steep early learning curve, and for Parks it will be even steeper due to the time missed. Parks did not play in the charity exhibition game at Dayton and was only on the court for a few moments during an open practice the week before the game.

Assuming a fully healthy lead-in to the regular season, Parks was ticketed for a role of probably 8-12 minutes off the bench as a backup to both Okpara and fourth-year center Zed Key. That could get scaled back further as Parks works to not only acclimate to the high-major level but to get his body back to full health.

There will be a bigger role for Parks in the coming years. Right now, he looks targeted for a reserve role as he gets healthy, more experience and grows his defensive versatility.

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