Nearly halfway through Big Ten play, Keita Bates-Diop is the near-unanimous frontrunner for the conference player of the year award.
The junior is averaging 20.9 points, 9.6 rebounds and 1.9 blocks in Big Ten play, shooting a red-hot 50.8 percent from the field and 40 percent from three-point range.
He has seven double-doubles on the season, has put up over 20 points eight times and had a three-game stretch where he tallied 85 points – the most of any Buckeye player over such a span since Michael Redd scored 86 in 1998.
Bates-Diop is a special talent, and is unquestionably the top player on the team and in the conference thus far, but he's not the player who's most vital to Ohio State's long-term success – that would be C.