Goo balls?
The Big Lettuce Torcher Bill Walton was in the news last week for comments he made about Thad Matta misusing Greg Oden.
Walton, appearing on ESPN Radio Friday morning, thought Matta didn't run enough of the attack through the big fella:
"I'm seeing Oden out there sort of standing around. You win in basketball when you attack."
And:
"[Oden is] the most under-utilized talent that I have ever seen in the college ranks."
As some of the commenters in the link above point out, Walton is probably only basing this evaluation on the few games he watched this season, but I also read a Tribune article (which I can't seem to find a link to) before the championship game that said NBA executives also thought that Matta had misused Oden this season -- saying that he wasn't being used to jump-start the break with passes from defensive rebounds. Of course, I watched for this in the championship game and he passed out to start breaks all night, so who knows.
I'm obviously pretty biased but I think Matta did a tremendous job of weaving a group of youngsters together with veterans and developing a game plan to beat each individual team that OSU played. Sure, we all wish Oden would have received some more passes into the post during the season, but it's still a team game and the team results speak pretty clearly.
What do you guys think? Did Matta misuse Oden this season?
