Men's Basketball
Buckeyes Flunk In Preseason Test vs. Oilers
By John Porentas

OSU Head Basketball Coach Thad Matta wasn't anywhere near panic after his team's embarrassing exhibition loss to Division II Findlay by a final score of 70-68 at the Schottenstein Center. He was more in the "I told you so" mode.

"We are not a very good basketball team. I've been saying it the whole time," Matta told reporters after the game.

Against Findlay, Matta's team went out and proved him right, much to the chagrin of senior point guard Jamar Butler.

"We just got beat by a Division II team. Nothing against them, in you own gym, yeah, I'm embarrassed," said Butler.

Findlay outshot, outrebounded, outdefended and generally outhustled the Buckeyes pretty much from start to finish. Matta found it so bad that he wasn't yet ready to comment on his team's performance in any detailed way.

"I want to look at the film and see just how awful we actually were," Matta quipped.

The Oilers led by as many as 13 in the first half and though the Buckeyes got as close as two points on three different occasions in the second half, the Oilers never relinquished the lead. The Oilers outrebounded the bigger Buckeyes by a 34-27 count, shot 41.7 per cent from three point range and made 80 per cent of their free throws. Findlay made swiss cheese of OSU's defense, beating it for easy shots inside or open threes with crisp passing and dribble-drive penetration.

"We didn't guard anybody tonight," said Matta.

Matta's reaction to his team's play might best be characterized as calm disgust. What seemed to disgust him the most was his team's lack of urgency and effort.

"We pick and choose (when to make effort) and you just can't play that way when you're as young as we are and number two when there's so many unknowns about our team," said Matta.

It was very different for the Oilers.

"It's David vs. Goliath and a lot of motivation, certainly a lot more motivation for our guys than possibly the Ohio State players," said Findlay Head Coach Ron Neikamp.

"I just think this game meant a lot more to us than it did to them. Lets be fair about that. I think for all of us this was a thrill of a lifetime. For them I think it's just another day of basketball, so we had a lot of motivation," said Niekamp.

And that's what seemed to really bother Matta, that his team simply did not complete from start to finish.

"I think it's eye-opening, because we talked about the small things and quite honestly they (his players) didn't believe it," said Matta.

"I think this team needed this in some ways," said Matta, who later claimed that he wasn't happy to have taken a loss.

"I thought about that. I don't like to lose. I asked myself the question coming down 'Am I glad we lost the game?' No, I'm not, I like to win," said Matta, who then basically contradicted himself.

"I'm competitive, but it would have been a shame had we won the game," said Matta.

As poorly as the Buckeyes played at times, they were still in a position to pull out the game as it wound down. Led by Kosta Koufos' second-half scoring, the Buckeyes had possession of the basketball with 23 seconds remaining and trailed by just three points. They ball got into the hands of Butler, but the Buckeye were unable to get into any kind of organized offense that could generate a shot.

"I'll be honest with you. I wanted to see what we would do at this stage," said Matta.

What he saw was an offense with nobody who wanted to take over and create a shot. The result was a lot of dribbling and no real threat. The Oilers finally fouled with just under four seconds to go to put Butler at the free throw line for two shots and down three points. When Butler made the first one, Matta called timeout and set up a play. Butler would miss the second shot in the hopes of allowing a teammate to get a rebound for a game-tying stickback. The strategy almost worked as Koufos nabbed the rebound and tried to tip it in, but the ball wouldn't go down.

"It felt good, it felt real good," said Koufos.

"They played real good defense. I should be able to finish that shot," Koufos said.

"The one thing I wish had said is 'You're going to have a lot of time. You can come down with the rebound," said Matta, who immediately found fault with his team's play.

"Once again, I assumed they knew how much time was on the clock," said Matta who seemed perturbed not so much because the shot was missed, but because his team seemed to panic at crunch time and just plain failed to perform.

"We had five things we wanted to do defensively in the first half and we got Fs on all of them, we failed at all five," said Matta.

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