Ohio State’s Aaron Craft is everything that’s great about college basketball. Scratch that: Ohio State’s Aaron Craft is everything that’s great about basketball in general.

In the age of showboating, multimillion dollar contracts, vulgar trash talking and tattoos, Craft is a pleasant and welcomed anomaly from the days of John Wooden, as ESPN’s Rick Reilly put it recently. He hustles, bustles and flexes his muscles on the hardwood and in the classroom for athletic and academic records every single student dreams of having (at Ohio State and around the country) and every single parent hopes to see their child achieve.

He’s a role model. Not just for young kids running around and cheering in Buckeye jerseys with #4 stitched in Scarlet and Gray, but also for his classmates and contemporaries and their parents alike. His effort is as relentless as his honesty in post-game interviews, which underscores the metaphorical significance of sports to life.

In Craft’s case, it’s basketball.

You won’t win every game or ace every test, but you need to prepare as if you will and should. In college basketball, there are only 40 minutes. That’s it. Craft is a prime example of an athlete (and student) who wants the opportunity to win and excel and will do whatever he has to in order to earn those opportunities. Not a guarantee at victory, but the opportunity for victory, just as in life.

If you’ve watched him carefully throughout the past 4 years, he’s undeniably one of the most opportunistic basketball players around, which is what separates him from the rest.

As The Ohio State Buckeyes prepare to battle the Dayton Flyers in Buffalo, New York today, everyone in Scarlet and Gray will need to rise to the level of their relentless senior point guard if they want the opportunity to continue a journey towards repeating a championship moment in Buckeye history from the days of short shorts and $.10 popcorn.

If this were a movie, it might be called, The Human Rubik’s Cube Rises.