Earlier today, Thad Matta and OSU announced that Brandon Miller would be joining the staff as assistant men’s basketball coach. Miller was widely speculated in rumors to get the job after John Groce accepted the head coaching job at Ohio University. That rumor came to fruition this afternoon.

Miller is coming back to Columbus after spending one season at his alma mater, Butler, as an assistant coach and before that he spent three seasons on the Matta’s Ohio State staff from 2005 to 2007. Miller is a former player under Matta also. He will assume Groce’s duties including recruiting, skills instruction, game preparation and on-court coaching.

Matta released this statement earlier today:

Brandon is a person I had the utmost respect for as a player and now have for as a coach…I recruited him out of high school and coached him at Butler. He worked for me at Xavier and was crucial to the early success we experienced at Ohio State our first three years. He knows the collegiate game as a player having played in two NCAA Sweet 16’s and as a coach having been part of an Atlantic 10 Championship and an NCAA Elite Eight appearance, two Big Ten championships and an NCAA national championship game appearance.  He has been part of our coaching family and knows how I operate and what my vision is for this program. Brandon is very passionate about Ohio State and what this university represents and I know he is thrilled to call Columbus home once again.

This comes as no suprise to Buckeye basketball fans. Most expect Miller to pickup where Groce left off. The only area of concern is in recruiting because Groce was known as a ferocious recruiter who was key in bringing in top notch prospects and Miller will have to help retain all the commits while pursuing future prospects.

In other basketball news on the recruiting front, Matta received reassuring news from Fort Wayne (Ind.) Bishop Luers small forward DeShaun Thomas and stud 2010 commit that he would indeed fufill his commitment to OSU after a year of speculation that he might be wavering. Thomas faced enormous outside pressure from numerous sources for him to open up his recruitment and consider other schools including his home state Indiana University. The turmoil at the traditional basketball school only helped Ohio State’s case in the recruit of Scout.com’s 8th best player in the country. With Kelvin Sampson’s departute due to numerous recruiting violations and after another year of Thomas looking around, he is 100% sure and told Scout this:

It’s been a little hard because people have been in my ear talking about, ‘It’s a good decision’ and then some people are like, ‘Wait, it’s too early to make a decision, wait until you get there. What if they aren’t treating you right like you wanted?’…Some people said it was a good decision and some people said it wasn’t. I was kind of stressing out, but they treat me like a family down there…I’m 100 percent committed…I’m there.

With Thomas reaffirmed commitment along with commitments from Jared Sullinger and Cameron Wright, the 2010 recruiting class looks to be one of the best in the nation.