On the second floor of St. John arena there is an office that is now occupied by Paul Biancardi and Dave Spiller of the OSU basketball coaching staff. The walls are covered with mementoes of past teams, from Boston College and other places, and both desks are piled high with what looks like hundreds of notes and letters to and from persons of interest to the Ohio State basketball program.

I had an appointment there yesterday at 11:00 AM, and when I arrived, Biancardi was at his desk, phone smashed firmly to his ear, making a point to someone somewhere. He was into it. Spiller was intently making a list of something, organizing data, cataloguing something. He was into it too. I felt like I had walked into a beehive, and almost felt guilty that these two very busy guys were taking time out of an obviously extremely busy day to talk to me, but they were very gracious and took the time.

No sooner than we had turned on the tape recorder and begun our interview, when none other Jim O'Brien poked his head in the door and politely said "excuse me, could I see you guys for a minute." Both Biancardi and Spiller excused themselves, popped up out of their seats, went to O'Briens office, and came back about 5 minutes later, never missing a beat in the conversation we were having.

What I am trying to convey here is that the OSU basketball office is an extremely busy and intense place right now, and Biancardi and Spiller are the hub of most of that activity. You see, that duo represents the OSU basketball recruiting staff, and if effort and energy mean anything at all, the Ohio State basketball program is going to be very good indeed in the next few years. These two guys are working like madmen to recruit great athletes to the OSU basketball program. From what I saw, it is only a matter of time until the success of their efforts will translate into success on the basketball floor.

Biancardi and Spiller both arrived to Ohio State as part of the staff that remained intact when Jim O'Brien left Boston College for OSU. While they arrived together at OSU, they took different paths on the way to the seats they now occupy in that office at St. John arena . Spiller was a standout shooting guard at Canisius University, having led the Golden Griffins in scoring his senior season. His dream was to make it as a player, to play pro ball. Biancardi, meanwhile, attended tiny Salem State College in Massachusetts, a Division III school, where he was a small forward on the basketball team and was captain of the team his senior season. According to Biancardi, he knew his limitations as a player and never even thought about a pro career.

"It was good. Division III was my level of playing, and I knew that and I enjoyed that. I really enjoyed my time there," Biancardi told the O-Zone in an exclusive interview yesterday. "I liked Salem State a lot."

Biancardi says that despite his limitations as a player, he knew very early on that he wanted to coach basketball.

"I was the captain of my team, and I was one of those guys who knew more about the game than I could actually physically do. I coached right at Salem State after I graduated. I graduated in physical education, and right from graduation I coached at Salem. I started at my Alma Mater. After Salem State, I went into the high school ranks for a year, then I went to Suffolk university, another Division III school. Then I went to Boston University with Mike Jarvis, then Boston College with Jim O'Brien, and now here at Ohio State," said Biancardi.

Spiller, on the other hand, had been a standout Division I player, and was ticketed to go to Finland to play professional basketball overseas after his final collegiate season, when he sustained a career ending injury.

"I tore a cartilage in my knee. At that time I was about 14 credits short of my degree, so I ended up doing my rehabilitation at Canicius and going back to college. The head coach at the time asked me if I would be interested in coaching the JV team while I was finishing up school, and that's how I ended up in coaching," said Spiller. "After I coached the JV team at Canicius, I had the opportunity to become the head coach at a Division III college, a school in Buffalo New York called D'Youville college. From there I went back to my Alma Mater as an assistant coach at Canicius college for two years. Then we got the job at Fordham University and so I went down there and was there for three years. I then had an opportunity to go with St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia in the Atlantic 10. I was there for a year, then I had the opportunity to go to Boston College with coach O'Brien, then finally here at Ohio State," said Spiller.

Both coaches have been involved with basketball nonstop since high school. That, you would think, would be a formula for burnout, but not for these two. Both admit to being in that select group of people who get up in the morning eager to go to work. Both of them, you see, love the game of basketball, and see their jobs as something to look forward to every day. But again, there were differences in the way each arrived at their appreciation of the coaching profession. For Biancardi, it was always in the cards.

"There's no doubt. When I was in college, guys didn't know why they were taking a particular major and didn't know what they wanted to be. I knew in college that I wanted to be either a high school teacher and a basketball coach at the high school level, or a basketball coach in college. I knew I wanted to be in education, and I wanted to be in coaching. I feel fortunate that I knew what I wanted, because it helped me get on track a lot earlier," said Biancardi.

Spiller, on the other hand, had to get over his desire to play before he became fully enamored with the idea of being a coach.

"Now I do (love coaching) but at the time, when I was younger, I still had aspirations of playing at the time. When I got out of college my aspirations were to go on and play professionally over seas. Once I had the injury, I felt like I didn't know if I would get the same kind of adrenaline in coaching that I did in playing. It ended up that I got the same adrenaline, probably more so, in terms of working with young people in coaching. So I enjoy coaching as much 20 years later. I've been coaching and just been fortunate that I am doing something that I love so much doing," said Spiller.

Both Spiller and Biancardi have East Coast roots, and say that there was a period of adjustment in moving to the middle west. Both also say that they like it here.

"It was just a culture change, but not a drastic culture change, a mild culture change," said Biancardi. "The people are friendly, they treat you well in the community. It's a great place to raise a family. I have a wife and a daughter, so it's been very good. Its been a good experience socially, and its been a great experience professionally at Ohio State. Columbus, Ohio is a city, so I don't feel like we are smack dab in the middle of corn country."

According to Spiller, he sees definite differences between the Midwest and the East.

""It's a little more laid back socially. The thing that I love about the place here is that the passion for sports here is second to none, and people are a lot more involved athletically in terms of families getting involved with teams. Sports-wise, that's been a major plus and its certainly been enjoyable from that standpoint. People are a little bit more friendlier," said Spiller.

Both Biancardi and Spiller have found Ohio State to be a great place to work, and say OSU compares well with Boston College as an institution. Biancardi put it this way.

"This school, being a public university, is more diverse. There is more variety of culture here. In terms of that it's probably much more the way the world is. The world is a very diverse place, and Ohio State has a diverse community, so it's good in that respect. Other than that, they're both educational places and they both provide good education for young kids."

Biancardi went on to add that Ohio State is great place to be in the basketball business.

"Ohio is definitely a good recruiting base. It's a fertile area. The state of Ohio produces good basketball players every year. So does the Midwest in general, so this is a good place to recruit from. Now, is it that good a place to recruit from right now? Well, being in the cellar of the Big 10, it's a hard sell right now, to be honest with you. Once we get over the hump, which we have, we had a real good first recruiting class, once you continually start getting back to back classes, the program gets better, and the more you win, the easier it will be to recruit from here. Expectations next year are probably not as high as they are going to be in the future. That comes with the job. Ohio State is a national school. It competes for championships in every sport, not just basketball and football, so there is a high level of pressure here, but there is also a great deal of support both from the administration and unbelievable passion from the fans. Everybody is on your side out here. It's a great place to work," said Biancardi.

Spiller concurred and added the following.

"As he mentioned, it's diverse, and as a whole, the people just bleed their sports. Certainly the support has been second to none. You look around and you see a brand new facility going up, the Schottenstein Center will be in the top tier of facilities in the country. The support and the commitment is definitely here," said Spiller.

Biancardi and Spiller share the same area of responsibility on the OSU basketball staff, recruiting. They take a tag-team approach to the job, and take their work very, very seriously.

"Mine is recruiting, and all the phases that go into that," said Biancardi when explaining his area of responsibility within the coaching staff. "The seniors, the underclassmen, official visits, home visits, itineraries, decision making, evaluation, everything that has to do with recruiting. From a coaching standpoint, we all have our various jobs at coaching, we all have input at practice, we all have certain specialization, for instance I work with front court players and low post players, Dave does as well. Then we also have some administrative duties," said Biancardi.

Spiller added "It's such a massive job. We're basically trying to keep a grip on recruiting, and that not only entails the senior class, but you're talking about juniors, sophomores, even freshmen. The thing that is a bit different being here at a school like Ohio State is that I remember getting a phone call about two months ago, and the guy was contacting us about an 8th grade prospect, just to give you an idea of the type of intense passion that is here in terms of the involvement that people have with the recruiting. So, we're involved with all the aspects of recruiting and make sure we understand what's going on with the kids in state and Midwest. But once at the same time again, once our kids are here, the guys you recruit, you have to make sure that they are here and that every thing is taken care of on their day to day operations also."

The Jim O'Brien coaching staff is comprised of one administrative assistant (Randy Shrout) and three "basketball" assistants, Rich Boyages, Spiller and Biancardi. It is interesting to see the emphasis that is put on recruiting, as two out of the three coaches have recruiting as their top area of responsibility. Biancardi said that the reason for that is quite simple.

"If you look at any major college program, any coach will tell you this. The success of your program falls in direct correlation with the success of your recruiting. If you recruit well, you're going to win. If you don't recruit well, you're not going to win. That's the bottom line for college athletics," said Biancardi.

Buckeye fans who have followed the OSU program's slide into oblivion are aware of the fact that recruiting great athletes is not good enough. The athletes have to be students and mesh well together as a team in order to be successful on the floor. According to Dave Spiller, the current OSU basketball staff is well aware of that.

"We're big on recruiting 'chemistry'," said Spiller. "Because you don't want to get into the situation where you 'over-recruit'. When you start doing that, you start getting into what we call the numbers game. Then you don't have success going back to those (high) schools and you don't get the 'feeder system' approach. We don't want that to happen, especially in recruiting, where it is a one-shot deal or one time affair. If we can continue to do a good job with the kids once they are here, and Ohio State can be a viable place for a program where he (a high school coach) can say 'I had a kid who went to school there and he had a great experience and now I have this kid and I want him to go there and have a similar type of great experience. We want to keep an open door policy with that. That's why we try to make sure we recruit chemistry, because if you have chemistry, then you will have a lot of success. You've got to have competition, but at the same time you've got to have good chemistry," said Spiller.

He went on to say that the current OSU recruiting staff is taking a long-term approach to rebuilding the Buckeye recruiting base.

"You have to. That's what makes you successful as a recruiter. Like ourselves, we came in here and we were able to get some kids from out of New York, because of our New York City ties, myself being a coach at Fordham and recruiting New York City, now we were able to go into there and get some pretty good kids from out of New York. That's been developed over the years because of the association we have with the coaches and the things we've done with the kids prior to coming here. Those guys (high school coaches) feel good about what we did with their kids in the past, so they say 'We have a couple of kids here and we still want them to be in your hands.', so you develop those relationships over time. That's what we are trying to do here now," said Spiller.

Both Spiller and Biancardi are excited to be at Ohio State. They like the environment, the support, and most of all, the opportunity to produce a winner. According to Spiller, he sees the sky as the limit as far as the OSU basketball program goes.

"I think we had a lot of success when we were at Boston College, and we were able to take it to the level where we went to the final eight (in the NCAA tournament), but not the final four. I think that with the resources here, you could reach a whole other level and at least compete for a national championship. I won't say win it, but I know that at least you could compete for it."

After the last few seasons, do those words sound like music to your ears, Buckeye fans?

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