Odd couple

COLUMBUS, OHIO —  They are a little bit Felix and Oscar, a little bit Mutt and Jeff.

Greg Oden is Ohio State’s 7-foot freshman man-child, a likely No. 1 overall NBA draft pick as soon as he says the word.

Mike Conley Jr. is the Buckeyes’ 6-foot-1 freshman point guard, the son of Olympic triple-jumper Mike Conley, and a far better player than anyone who figured he was just Oden’s sidekick imagined.

Oden and Conley were high school teammates at Indianapolis Lawrence North, where they won three consecutive Indiana state titles and went 103-7 in four seasons.

Now they play for the Buckeyes, ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press poll and No. 1 by ESPN/USA Today as they prepare for a showdown Sunday with Wisconsin, the AP’s lame-duck No. 1 after losing to Michigan State.

Friends since the sixth grade, Oden and Conley share a suite with two other freshmen basketball players, attend many of the same classes -- and banter like bickering spouses who have made their differences part of their bond.

“I’m the messy one,” Conley said, ‘fessing up before Oden could say anything.

“It’s just nasty,” Oden said. “He doesn’t clean up the bathroom sometimes. He’s never washed dishes yet.”

Conley flashed a grin.

“That’s because I don’t use the dishes,” he said. “I don’t use the silverware. All the stuff I use is from the cafeteria. Plastic. Then you put it in the trash can. That’s the smart thing to do, so I don’t have to wash dishes.”

Oden shook his head impatiently.

“When you have a house, or something else people have got to share, you’ve got to look out for everybody else. You can’t just look out for yourself,” he said.

Conley shrugged, and that grin of his slipped out again.

“You’ve got to be smart,” he said. “That’s all.”

Oden wasn’t through.

“The bathroom’s just nasty,” he said. “I cleaned it last weekend.”

“OK,” Conley said. “Then it’s still clean.”

“No,” Oden said, hanging his head and shaking it. “No.”

They are not inseparable -- each has a girlfriend, and Oden sometimes would rather watch “Talladega Nights” on DVD again than go out -- but are never far apart.

“We’re best friends,” Conley said. “I mean, we like a lot of the same things and do a lot of the same things. We’re always together somehow, so you could say that.”

Ohio State Coach Thad Matta calls them “different, but the same.”

“Both are relatively quiet, but they read each other so well,” he said. “I can go to Mike and say, ‘Hey what’s going on with Greg?’ and I can go to Greg and say, ‘What’s going on with Mike?’ and they always seem to know.”

All the commotion over Oden’s Patrick Ewing-like potential has at times obscured the ability of Conley, who after all, was a McDonald’s All-American too, and second to Oden in the voting for Indiana’s Mr. Basketball award last year.

From the time they were in junior high, Oden and Conley played together on a summer-league team, and Conley’s father -- who won a state basketball championship as a high school player in Illinois before making his name in track -- was the coach.

But it was their high school coach, Jack Keefer, who first realized what is becoming as apparent at Ohio State as it was at Lawrence North.

Lawrence North and Ohio State could win without Oden -- the 25-3 Buckeyes beat everybody they played except North Carolina before Oden made his debut in December after recuperating from wrist surgery -- but they would be hard-pressed to win without Conley, whose heady and efficient floor game is complemented by the bursts of speed and leaping ability you’d expect from the son of an Olympic gold medalist.

“I’m just happy he’s getting the recognition he deserves,” Oden said. “I knew all along how good he was and what he could do out there. Now everybody else is recognizing it.”

Conley has had six 10-assist games, and leads the Big Ten in assists at 6.5 a game -- good for fifth in the nation. He also leads the league in steals, at 2.4 a game, and in assist-to-turnover ratio, at 3.1.

Oden -- whose defense is ahead of his offense much the way Ewing’s game was during his freshman year at Georgetown -- leads the Buckeyes with 15.5 points, 9.7 rebounds and 3.5 blocked shots a game, and he is first in the Big Ten in rebounds and blocks.

Yet when Oden got into foul trouble during a seven-block game against Michigan a few weeks ago, Conley picked up the team with a career-high 23-point performance, adding six assists.

“Mike can take over a game if he wants to,” Oden said. “I know what he can do. He can do a lot of things he hasn’t shown anybody yet. He’s a great player.”

Michigan Coach Tommy Amaker, the starting point guard on Duke’s 1986 Final Four team, applauded Conley too.

“Outstanding,” he said. “He controls their team, scores when it’s there, takes care of the basketball, keeps everybody happy. He’s tremendous.”

Surprisingly few coaches recruited Oden as hard as might have been expected, with many -- North Carolina’s Roy Williams among them -- acknowledging they thought Oden would jump straight to the NBA, even though he kept saying he wanted to go to college.

It sometimes seemed as if Matta was the only coach who believed him.

“Yeah, I think I was at times,” Matta said. “I really do.”

When the NBA instituted its new minimum-age rule, it made a moot point of Oden’s decision, and Matta landed both players, partly because he already had lapped the competition -- and he had already won over Conley.

“The first time I saw Michael Conley play, I thought he was the perfect point guard for our system,” Matta said. “And the fortunate thing is there was a 7-footer that was probably going to come with him.”

Oden said that was never a sure thing.

“It was more of a decision that we had to make ourselves. It happened to be that we chose the same college,” he said, but insists he wouldn’t have gone to the NBA out of high school, even if the rule hadn’t changed.

“I feel college still would have been best,” he said. “It just happened that lately the trend was kids jumping to the NBA. People thought the rule wasn’t going to get put in and I was going to follow in their footsteps.”

Instead, he and Conley are following each other’s footsteps for yet another season, attending Sociology 101 and the History of Rock and Roll together and playing for the Buckeyes.

“I’m not thinking about next year right now. I’m concentrating on this season,” Oden said.

They both believe it could be special -- and it could be their last together.

“The first day we stepped on campus in the summertime, we saw our team could be pretty good,” Conley said.

They’re sticking together for now. They’re even roommates on the road, where Oden mentioned one thing in particular that contributes to the domestic tranquillity.

Hotel housekeeping service.

*

robyn.norwood@latimes.com