Matta Out as Ohio State Buckeyes men’s basketball Head Coach
June 5, 2017On the current iteration of Bradley Zimmer
June 6, 2017Happy Tuesday, WFNY!
My freshman year at The Ohio State University was pretty great.
It was 1998, and the John Cooper’s OSU football team was #1 in the country. Joe Germaine was putting up one of the best seasons of any QB in OSU history throwing to the likes of David Boston and Dee Miller, Michael Wiley and Joe Montgomery were tearing up defenses on the ground, and the defense, led by All-Everything linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer along with the best defensive backfield OSU had ever seen (Antoine Winfield, Ahmed Plummer, Nate Clements, Damon Moore, and Gary Berry), was arguably the most feared defense in the country that season. That team was stacked, and they were great. Still to this day I consider that the best Ohio State football team of my life1. Yes, they had the frustrating upset loss at home to Nick Saban’s Michigan State team, but it was a fun season and that team was just amazing to watch.
Then that winter, the basketball team under the guidance of second-year coach Jim O’Brien and led by the dynamic back court of Scoonie Penn and Michael Redd made it all the way to the Final Four. That kicked off a four-year run in which the Buckeyes made the tournament every season. Even though they only made it past the first round twice under O’Brien, it really felt like a golden age of Buckeye basketball.
Just one year after I graduated from Ohio State, both John Cooper and Jim O’Brien were out as coaches at Ohio State. Cooper was replaced by Jim Tressel, who would win the program’s first National Championship since 1968 (or 1970, depending on who you ask). O’Brien would be replaced by none other than Thad Matta, the man who would transform Ohio State Basketball and raise the program to heights never seen before.
Prior to Matta, plenty of coaches had found various levels of real success at Ohio State. Fred Taylor won the program’s only title in 1960 as his teams made three consecutive Championship game appearances. Harold Olsen led the program to their first Championship game appearance in 1939 and would lead the team to four Final Fours in his 24-year tenure. Gary Williams and Randy Ayers would have good seasons here and there. But throughout it all, Ohio State was a football school with a basketball program that would give fans something to really be excited about once every five years or so. Sprinkling in some NCAA tournament appearances here and there, some generational players (Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Clark Kellogg, Jim Jackson, Michael Redd) every now and then. That was it. Little was expected and attention was waning at best.
Under Matta, all of that changed. In just 13 seasons at Ohio State, Matta flew past Fred Taylor’s record for wins. Matta would take Ohio State to two Final Fours, one National Championship Game appearance, five Big Ten regular season Championships, four Big Ten Tournament Championships, nine NCAA tournament appearances, five Sweet Sixteens, and three Elite Eights. In years in which his teams were eligible for postseason play, he only missed the tournament three times. He had a stretch of seven years in a row with at least one player drafted in the NBA and he sent 10 players to the NBA overall. Four of his players were drafted in the Top 5 of the NBA draft. In 2007 he had three players taken in the first round.
It’s hard to properly place into words just what Matta meant to Ohio State overall, but as a coach and as a person there has never been a finer coach in school history. He persevered through unimaginable pain and suffering as his back failed him, but he never publicly complained, never let his players hear him whine about it. He just endured. And he kept doing his job at a level never seen before at Ohio State.
I don’t know how I feel about his departure. As Twitter was filled with glee and people dancing on his grave yesterday, I was just filled with sadness. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. That quote applies to coaches in college sports as much as anything else. Few of the great ones get to have a long, slow, graceful exit. If you succeed, you change expectations. You then eventually become a victim of your own success and expectations.
So no, I’m not happy about Matta leaving. But it might be the right thing for the program. As much as I want to cling to the surface and say “Hey, look, we only missed the tournament two years in a row, Matta should be given more time to get things back on track”, the truth is, there are deeper problems. Something has been off with Matta’s recruiting in recent years. I don’t know why. Was it a change in how recruiting works today? Were his health issues slowing him down too much in hitting the recruiting trail? Were other coaches using his health against him in recruiting? There’s probably some truth in all of those things. Whatever the reason, though, Matta’s recruiting simply hadn’t been good enough for quite some time and things were trending worse rather than looking like he was turning them around.
But as a fan and alum, it was heartbreaking watching Thad Matta have to choke his way through the tears as he delivered a moving and heartfelt farewell speech yesterday. This isn’t how he should have had to leave. In a perfect world, he should have been able to leave on his own terms.
The timing of the firing (and yes, this was a firing, make no mistake) was peculiar to put it lightly. If I had to guess what happened, and this is only a guess, I would guess that Gene Smith told Matta that he had made up his mind that he would be asking Matta to step down after next season and that nothing that happened this season would change his mind. At that point, Matta might have asked to just step down immediately then, rather than go through the humiliation of a lame duck season. I have no inside information, but based on the timing and Gene Smith and Thad Matta both saying it was a mutual decision, that’s about the only scenario that makes any sense to me.
Now Ohio State once again has to replace a once-revered coach who had a sudden and surprising exit from the program. The university got lucky with Jim Tressel when they were able to replace him with Urban Meyer. That’s not typically how these things go. Despite some claiming Ohio State is a highly-coveted job, I suspect this time things aren’t going to work out quite as well for Ohio State.
Sean Miller was always a pipe dream anyway, but now there’s absolutely no way on earth he leaves the No. 1 team in the country in June to come to a football school. Gregg Marshall, Shaka Smart, and Billy Donovan are all long-shots. Xavier’s Chris Mack is probably the most realistic coach with the most impressive resume. But even he might be more of a long-shot than people realize due to his comfort level with Xavier and the fact that he is a Xavier alum. Beyond that, none of the names of likely candidates are of the caliber of coach that Thad Matta was when he was hired.
To be honest, I’m a little surprised Ohio State didn’t just name Chris Jent interim coach and then conduct a proper search at the appropriate time next year. Maybe Sean Miller would have been a more likely candidate at that time (although probably not… he has one of the best jobs in America and gets to lead one of the best programs at a true basketball school).2 Maybe the pool of candidates could have been a little wider and included more realistic names to be excited about.
I’ll fully support whoever Ohio State hires and I will try to hold them to more realistic standards than what Thad Matta created. But the truth is, I’m really going to miss Coach Matta. It’s going to take some time for this to all fully set in and to realize that he is no longer coaching here. So I just want to say thank you to Coach Matta for everything he did for my school and to wish him and his family nothing but happiness, health, and future success in whatever endeavors come their way.
- You would certainly get no arguments from me if you went with the 2002 team which sent every starter except two to the NFL or the 2014 team which eventually had 12 players taken in the first round of the 2016 draft, but for my money I still say the 1998 team had the most elite top-line talent of any OSU team in my life. [↩]
- Editor’s Note: Miller also gets to live year-round in Tucson. While the desert is a bit crazy during the summer, those are the months that Miller is allowed to travel. There is something to be said for 70 degree January days. [↩]
62 Comments
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Something happened to Matta. I don’t know what it was, but things haven’t been “right” with that program for the last 3 years or so.
Yeah, sad to see him go, but I guess it was time. He leaves with a better legacy and reputation than Cooper.
According to PTI, he was the winningest coach in Big Ten history among coaches with at least 10 years in — better than Knight, Izzo, and everybody else.
Reading this article reminded me that OSU has only one national title in all this time. Shows how hard those puppies are to come by if you’re not Duke, N.C., UCLA, or Kentucky.
It certainly wasn’t due to any competition out of Bloomington.
It just occurred to me that yesterday was Hank Fraley day, and we missed it. Why did Gene Hickerson have to wear the number of the greatest football form in Cleveland Browns history??? (I joke, but I seriously really liked Fraley – good dude.)
They should have made this move three months ago. Archie would have been in play for that job. Foolish.
Agreed. Not sure why they waited so long.
I thought about Hank, but it’s hard to beat an epic pic of a HOFer pulling.
But here is Fraley bulldozing Ed Reed (My favorite non-Brown).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef8d4aa092d993f3230e443540ea53bc92fee77c95c1fd6196e42f0ad587bf05.jpg
I also like this one, because it gives the full “Fraley Effect.”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9cfce1298346770fe899c1b30082e5a6efddf9f3f1ef53d4ae8d00f9e5bed876.jpg
Classic Fraley pulling a bin of Philly Cheese Steaks.
in my own Toledo-biased opinion , once Matta let Toledoan Nigel Hayes go to Wisconsin instead of Ohio State , his recruiting has been less than spectacular.
He always looked to me as if he had just driven the equipment truck to the stadium and was grabbed by the coaches as an emergency fill-in. You can almost see his gallon-sized Mountain Dew jug with the bendy straw on the sideline by the Gatorade consumed by the other guys. And there is definitely a Bluetooth headset under that helmet.
Fraley was a bi-pedal stomach
Thad is not a good fit in the current landscape of NCAA (and AAU) basketball…and that’s a compliment to him
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjA5Njk3MjM4OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTc5MTE1MQ@@._V1_UY268_CR0,0,182,268_AL_.jpg
There are many rumors that the biggest issue with tOSU recruiting was his unwillingness to ‘pay-for-play’
Only rumors though
He was our 6th option at center the year he started. Always respected the job he did there.
I know I’ve said this before, and it’s not that unique for a pro athlete, but I went to training camp one year with my toddler son, and Hank signed an almost impossibly small football that he was clutching. Couldn’t have been nicer to a random guy and his random son. Until then, I just kind of thought of him as a comical figure on a mostly comical team, but after that he was my favorite player – and I grew to really appreciate the way he played. He was pretty good.
There is much about Fraley that is compatible with Cleveland’s DNA
Yeah, and it’s a sad reminder that with the one and dones–once you emit the faintest scent of stale coach or program, you might as well be a raw sewage plant. The mass exodus of kids from the program and lack of recruits made this only a matter of time. I’m really shocked they waited this long frankly…and I really like Matta.
Maybe because I just coached my 5 yr old on signing a bday card, but I imagine you saying “Now, oh wow…a little careful. That H is a little big. Need to save room for the other letters and…oh ok…uh yeah thanks Han.”
What G_O conveniently left out of that story was that he shoved three women and a sixth-grader out of the way to catch that tiny football for his 30th reunion during his high school’s homecoming game. He then picked out his old number 82 on the sideline and yelled “That’s how it’s done, kid!”
30th?? How old do you think I am? Okay, so maybe this year is my 25th, but that was in 2008!
And my old number was 8.
But yes, I would totally destroy anyone – ANYONE – in my way to get that sweet, sweet souvenir.
I have heard the same, but have also heard that the administration completely supported him on it.
plus ça change….
https://twitter.com/ScottPetrak/status/872114565638705152
I figured that any lawyer as distinguished as yourself must be at least early 50’s. You must be a rare prodigy!!
Hot Buttered Cheese Steaks.
But you left out the part afterwards where he did his celebration Running Man dance and tore his ACL, MCL, and most of the ligaments in both ankles.
Aside from his agonizing pain, of course, it was pretty funny to see.
56K Baud and everything!
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-08myvOG3DR8/Uu1-ejGYN7I/AAAAAAAAAKM/uIPvLMaCPlg/s1600/6kv5r.gif
Because now they can hire Mike Brown!
We’ll start calling him Gramatica_O
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/enhanced/web05/2012/7/17/14/anigif_enhanced-buzz-21445-1342549567-1.gif?downsize=715:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto
Also am sure I have mentioned it, but his wife was a regular commenter on an old Browns board I frequented and their family tailgated with those guys.
uh yeah, thanks Han
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_le0zo9IfWm1qcig1w.gif
Wait, are you saying Fraley started the Mr. Hero curse?
*ahem*
http://i.cdn.turner.com/nba/nba/dam/assets/140620141143-david-blatt-iso-thumbs-up-062014.1200×672.jpg
until the recruits completely dried up, of course
Because is is a brilliant tactician, leading Oakland over the Cavs and all…
Why Al? WHY?!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2017/06/06/al-pacino-play-joe-paterno-hbos-biopic-penn-state-scandal/102545080/
Makes sense to me. He was Michael Corleone, hero turned godfather of an organized crime family. This is not all that different.
But, Tom Hagen wasn’t a pedo…
No, but Fredo might as well have been.
It’s never Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off the Nakotomi Tower.
So, if he sends Sandusky out fishing with Neri, I’ll watch.
If they produce it here in PA, I guarantee they’ll revise the story accordingly.
But did he have to take it out on Albus??
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/dumbledore_death_slow.gif
There is nothing cursed about Mr Hero.
Has Pacino done anything good in the past 25 years? An honest question, not snark. The most recent things of note that come to mind are from the mid-to-late 90’s.
“Has Pacino done anything good in the past 25 years?”
Neither has Paterno. That’s why it’s so perfect.
Ah, yes…. one of these meta, post-modern things where there’s a mirroring of form and content… I like it.
Hmmm.
After some searching…
Carlito’s Way, 1993.
Donnie Brasco, 1997.
I’ll let you make the call on Heat, 1995…and The Devil’s Advocate, 1997.
But, yeah, it’s been a long time.