The Ohio State basketball program has hit quite a bit of a rough patch.
At 15-13 overall and just 5-10 in the Big Ten, the Buckeyes are going to miss the NCAA tournament for the second-straight season — barring a Big Ten tournament run for the ages.
It’s an interesting crossroads for a program that rose to heights never seen before under the direction of head coach Thad Matta. And after these two rather underwhelming back-to-back seasons, it has many wondering about the current state of Ohio State.
Matta doesn’t necessarily want to address the big picture concerns, though. Not right now, anyway.
“I know where you guys are going with this and it’s difficult, but we just lost a five-point lead with 30 seconds to go in the last game so I’m not going to say everything is great; I’m still reeling from that loss,” Matta said Wednesday. “I think we can address these questions at another time. I’ve got to coach a basketball team.”
“I know where you’re going, but for me to say, ‘Yeah, we’re 100 percent on the right page.’ We just lost a game like we felt like we put ourselves in a position to win for 39 minutes and we didn’t win it,” he continued. “I’m still not real happy about that and to project or look back and all that stuff, I’ve got 3 o’clock practice today.”
Ohio State hosts 16th-ranked Wisconsin on Thursday and then wraps up its regular-season at Penn State the following Tuesday and home against Indiana one week from Saturday. Then, it’s on to Big Ten tournament. If the season ended today — it obviously does not — the Buckeyes would be playing on the very first day as one of the bottom four seeds in the league.
Frankly, the program is at the lowest point it has been in what is now Matta’s 13th season at the helm. Many thought that was actually last year when Ohio State missed its first NCAA tournament since the 2008-09 season, but the Buckeyes’ record is worse this year despite the fact they returned their top-six players.
Following last season, after four players of Ohio State’s five-man freshman class transferred, Matta said he wanted to get the program back to how he ran it in previous years when the Buckeyes were annual Big Ten contenders. There were changes made. He brought back Chris Jent as an assistant coach.
Ultimately, however, the results haven’t been there this season, and Matta was asked Wednesday if he felt the program was where he wanted.
“No, not at all. I think we’ve still got work to do in the process,” Matta said. “But it’s not as easy in building a program as snapping your fingers saying we want to be back and it’s back. It doesn’t work that way. There’s a lot of situations in coaching that pertain to life and sometimes you’ve got to get knocked down to learn your lesson.”
After his team practiced Tuesday, Matta traveled to New Jersey to watch 2018 point guard Jahvon Quinerly, according to Adam Zagoria. Matta was asked during Wednesday’s press conference if that illustrated his long-term commitment to the Ohio State program.
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely,” he said. “No question about that.”
The last two years certainly aren't what Ohio State fans — or Matta — are accustomed to. It's certainly an interesting time in the history of the program.
“I think this profession if you do this long enough, you sort of become numb," Matta said. "I’ve always said this: I never get too high and I never get too low. Am I little bit lower than normal? Yeah, I probably am, but I think from the standpoint of there’s some things I know this team can do and I know there’s a level we can play at."
"Somehow, someway we’ve got to get them to believe they can do that."
