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Men's Basketball
Third Title Proves Matta Not Just a Recruiter
By Brandon Castel

After winning his third regular-season Big Ten Championship in five years Tuesday night, Thad Matta was asked how he feels he has grown in his six years as the head coach at Ohio State.

“I think I’m doing all right,” he said with a smile.

Thad Matta shows some fire on the sideline. Evan Turner (lower left of the photo) seems to be enjoying the show. The photo was taken while Turner was out of action with a back injury.
Photo by Jim Davidson

“I know this, I’m a great recruiter according to everybody.”

It turns out much of what is said on internet message boards and fan forums does make it back to the man in charge.

Matta’s clever post-game remark pokes a hole in a popular sentiment that his success as a basketball coach can directly, and almost exclusively, be attributed to his ability to evaluate talent and sell a program.

And yet if we learned anything from watching the Buckeyes cut down the nets at Value City Arena Tuesday after their 73-57 win over Illinois, it’s that Matta means so much more to the program than just the players he recruits.

With names like Greg Oden, Mike Conley Jr., Daequan Cook, Kosta Koufos, B.J. Mullens, Evan Turner, William Buford and Jon Diebler it would be hard for anyone to argue that Matta has had some great players during his time in Columbus. But what great coaches didn’t have great players?

Thad Matta has a teaching moment with Evan Turner.
Photo by Jim Davidson

Certainly having Turner on the court went a long way in helping Ohio State to the conference crown, but who deserves the credit for Turner’s three-year maturation from a mistake-prone freshman to a National Player of the Year candidate as a junior?

When Turner went down with a back injury in December, the Buckeyes began the Big Ten season with three losses in their first four games. Fans were quick to criticize Matta as a good recruiter who was not of much value on game days. He couldn’t coach a defense, he didn’t use enough of his bench and he wasn’t teaching his players how to rebound or shoot free throws.

Yet with their 13th win in their last 14 conference games Tuesday, Ohio State became the first school since Wisconsin in 1957 to overcome a 1-3 start in the Big Ten and win the regular season title.

At no point did Matta add any new talent to the team, and he wasn’t secretly sneaking Jared Sullinger into Dallas Lauderdale’s jersey, hoping Ed Hightower would be too busy watching himself on TV to notice.

Thad Matta celebrates after cutting down the net after OSU's most recent Big Ten championship.
Photo by Dan Harker

Undoubtedly the players deserve as much credit as the coach for not throwing in the towel after a ghastly start to the season, but it’s hard to argue with Matta’s success. This was about good old fashion coaching.

When he and his staff arrived at Ohio State from Xavier in 2004, the Buckeyes were coming off a 14-16 season the previous year and a ninth place finish in the Big Ten under Head Coach Jim O’Brien. Matta faced a post-season ban in his first year as a hangover from the Aleksandar Radojevic fiasco that led to O’Brien’s dismissal.

Somehow, Matta led his inaugural team, which included O’Brien’s recruits not his, to a 20-12 season and an upset of undefeated and No. 1 ranked Illinois in the regular season finale. A year later, Matta would capture his first Big Ten title – the school’s first outright conference championship since 1992 – while leading the Buckeyes to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Again, he was using mostly O’Brien’s guys.

“It’s exciting because when we rolled in here and I think back to the first team meeting we had with those guys, we were on a four-year plan to be honest with you,” Matta said.

“In year two, to win a Big Ten Championship; the next year to play for a national championship; the next year win the NIT, the next year to lose Dave Lighty and you make the NCAA Tournament. And now sitting here as Big Ten champs again, I like where we are.”

The NCAA runner-up and NIT Title came with his own recruits, but most of those players lasted only one year in Columbus.

“We always laugh, if it was the old days where you had to stay in school for a while, we’d probably have a few more (Big Ten titles) in our hands as well,” said Matta, who has won 20 games or more in all 10 of his seasons as a head coach.

The Buckeyes lost three one-and-done players after the NCAA run in Matta’s third year and one more in each of the next two seasons. Tuesday’s senior night was a perfect reminder of exactly what Matta is up against. If all players stayed in school for four years like Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek, then Oden, Conley and Cook would all have been a part of the senior night celebration. Koufos would be a junior and Mullens a sophomore. Imagine those five teamed with Turner, Buford, Diebler, Lighty and Dallas Lauderdale.

“We always joke about it. Michael (Conley) was back for the all-star break but we laugh about it,” he said.

But it’s one of those laughs that hits a little too close to home.

Matta had to completely rebuild his roster the last two years, winning the NIT and making it back to the NCAA Tournament with a team of freshmen and sophomores. When he was finally able to put a veteran squad on the court in 2009-10, the Buckeyes won 24 games during the regular season and find themselves ranked No. 6 in the country heading into post-season play.

“Somebody said they heard people were upset because they can’t relate to our players because we lose guys all the time, and I started laughing,” said Matta, who has the best winning percentage (.740) in Ohio State basketball history.

“I said, ‘we’re starting a fourth-year junior in David (Lighty), (along with) three juniors and a sophomore. That’s who we started tonight and the guy that came off the bench, Kyle (Madsen), is a fifth year senior in our program. Five of them are from Ohio.”

And yet recruiting still may be the one thing Matta does best. While he didn’t sign any players this past year, his 2010 class ranks among the best in the country.

“We’ve got great players coming in,” Matta said of a class that includes five-stars Jared Sullinger and DeShaun Thomas.

“If we can keep the band together for one more year with what we’ve got added, it’s exciting.”

Even without Turner, the Buckeyes would likely be favored to repeat as Big Ten champs next season.

Not bad for a guy who can’t coach.

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