COLUMBUS, Ohio - Senior Day dominated the headlines after Ohio State's 71-63 win over Illinois Thursday night, and while Andre Wesson and Danny Hummer certainly deserved the celebration, it paled in comparison to the Ohio State royalty that took the court during halftime.

2020 will mark the 60th anniversary of Ohio State's lone basketball national championship, and in front of a packed Value City Arena crowd, the 1960 NCAA champions were honored and given the opportunity to step back on the court as Buckeyes.

It's been over half a century since the likes of Jerry Lucas, Joe Roberts, Mel Nowell, Dick Furry brought a title to Columbus, but the bond that brought them together as a team is still going strong today.

"Winning a national championship is unique," Lucas said. "It puts you in a very elite group of people, and this was an elite group of people before we ever won the national championship. We were all from Ohio, except one. Many of us knew each other coming into school and played against each other. And it was just a unique situation."

Then-seniors Roberts and Furry along with then-sophomores Lucas and Nowell led an Ohio State team, along with John Havlicek and Larry Siegfried, that had six seniors on their roster, basically unheard of in today's game.

While the Buckeyes could have had a logjam of departing players looking for minutes in their final year, what special mark of this team is that they were all working towards the same goal and were on the same page.

"I think that's one of the big reasons we were successful," Lucas said. "One of the great things about this team is there was no selfishness among the players on this team. We realized our purpose, we worked hard to attain it."

Lucas averaged 26.3 points per game and 16.4 rebounds, but as a sophomore, he was putting these numbers up essentially in his first season as freshman were not able to play at that time according to NCAA bylaws.

He was the dominant force on the team and drew the ire of all that played him, and during a different time back in the 60's when players played and fouled a little hard, Roberts didn't envy Lucas' position.

"You know, as a sophomore, they'd beat the hell out of him," Roberts said. "I've gone through that. I never want to be a lead scorer, because the leading scored, you gonna get tapped. I didn't have a temperament for guys hitting on me because I was gonna hit back."

While the team partly worked well because of their common goal, the biggest factor was the bond that these men had.

Things were different back then without recruits meeting up at the latest camps or on official visits, and the core players of the 1960 national championship team knew each other and played with each other before they put on their Scarlet and Gray uniforms.

They had the skill to compete with any team given how talented the roster was, but the additional push from the brotherhood they shared propelled them to new heights.

"I think one of the things that our team had that any team - including the people playing for Chris [Holtmann] will be - to be good friends and get along well," Furry said. "We've had a ball yesterday and today, the stories that we've retold, you know, are kind of unbelievable."

With Roberts and Furry graduating after the title season, the championship win at the Cow Palace was the final time these men shared the court together, at least as players.

Thursday night's reunion saw nine players, a team manager and two widows of players who had since passed join together once again on the court.

Even though it's been 60 years since these men celebrated their title after the game clock hit all zeroes, they still talk about feeling elation from being part of a small group that has won an NCAA title, but above all else, they feel that everlasting bond with their brothers and teammates.

"I had achieved a number of things that I felt really good about, that any individual should feel good about," Nowell said. "But when we got here, and I say we because we joined each other, before we even chose a college, we joined each other and played together. But when we won that national championship as we approached it and got to it, I kept not looking ahead, but simply saying we had a job to do at that time."