As an older aficionado of Ohio State hoops, I have to chuckle when people slam Thad Matta and say he should be fired.
Fans of Ohio State basketball today are used to watching their team win lots of games. In fact, entering the 2015-16 season, the Buckeyes had won at least 20 games in 11 consecutive seasons, surpassing the 30-win mark on three occasions. The high-water mark came in 2006-07, with a 35-win effort and an NCAA runner-up finish.
These 11 glorious seasons coincide with Thad Matta’s tenure at Ohio State.
It wasn’t always that way. Before Matta, Jim O’Brien led the program for seven seasons. He would have had four 20-win campaigns if not for NCAA violations vacating so many of those wins.*
*Officially, his best season was his 17-15 record and an eighth-place finish in the B1G in 2002-03. That Final Four appearance and those three early tournament exits? Never happened, says the NCAA.
Prior to O’Brien, the program was in worse shape. Sure, Randy Ayers’ tenure at Ohio State started like a house on fire, with a pair of first-place finishes in the conference in 1990-91 (27-4, 15-3 in the Big Ten) and 1991-92 (26-6, 15-3). Ayers led the Buckeyes to the Sweet Sixteen and the Elite Eight in his first three years, but that was done largely with Gary Williams’ recruits.
A veteran team, led by All-American Jim Jackson and starting guards Jamaal Brown and Mark Baker, overwhelmed opponents. They had help in the form of front court players like Perry Carter, Treg Lee, and Lawrence Funderburke, plus the sharp shooting of Chris Jent.
Once those guys started to cycle out of the program, Ayers muddled through five consecutive forgettable seasons, finishing no better than seventh in the conference and winning no more than 15 games in any year. The nadir was a 6-22 (2-16) campaign in 1994-95, in which his team finished 10th in the league. He somehow survived the axe, only to come back and end up in 10th again after a 10-17 (3-15) year (which he survived again!).
Williams, for his part, is fondly remembered by Buckeye fans for his recruits and his aggressive style of basketball — and he really did energize the program. But he was barely over a .500 coach at Ohio State, leading his teams to a three-year mark of 59-41 (.590). His conference record was even worse, at just 24-30 (.444).
His teams finished sixth twice and eighth in conference play and made the NCAA tournament only once. Williams went 20-3 in both 1986-87 and 1987-88 and then 19-15 in his final season of 1988-89. He brought no trophies to Columbus, although he did coach an NIT runner-up squad in 1987-88. So he's got that going for him, which is nice.
Williams may have won a national championship (or two) if he’d stayed in Columbus another year or two, but we’ll never know. He bolted to his alma mater after three seasons and became a legend at Maryland instead. Ayers took over the Buckeyes and, after a pair of fun seasons, the ceiling caved in.
Before Williams came Eldon Miller. From 1977-86, Miller led Ohio State to just four 20-win seasons in nine tries (never more than 21 though, which he accomplished twice), and never won a conference title. His teams finished second three times. His other finishes were sixth, fourth, tied for fifth, fifth, tied for third and seventh.
The historic photograph of Ohio State before Matta is clearly of a team that had a good run during the careers of Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek and Larry Siegfried more than 50 years ago. However, it has otherwise been a mid-level Power Five basketball program with occasional flirtations with legitimacy.
So forgive me if I roll my eyes so hard that I sprain them when I hear people calling for Matta’s job. I don’t know what Ohio State’s ceiling is as a program, but I’ve seen its floor. Those final three seasons under Ayers were hard to take. In 1994-95, the Buckeyes lost nine straight conference games and fell to Ohio University, Bowling Green and Cleveland State. Yup, Ohio State was, at best, the fourth-best college hoops team in Ohio that year.
In 1994-95, the Buckeyes lost nine straight conference games and fell to Ohio University, Bowling Green and Cleveland State. They were, at best, the fourth-best team in Ohio that year.
Even during a rebuild in the Matta era, this is the proverbial land of milk and honey.
The Buckeyes have never finished lower than sixth in Matta’s first 11 years and the team is on pace to finish higher than that in 2015-16 (if it can navigate the second half of the conference schedule as well as it did the first — more on that later). He finished sixth a year ago and back in his first season, back in 2004-05.
Conversely, his teams have won or shared the B1G regular season title five times. That's more championships than O'Brien, Williams, Ayers, and Miller combined in the years between 1977-2004.
Matta’s Buckeyes have four Big Ten tournament championships. He’s also won the NIT, reached the Final Four twice and the national championship game once. He’s gotten his team to at least the Sweet Sixteen five times in his first 11 years. That’s kind of ridiculous.
He's also the winningest coach in OSU history and has the highest winning percentage of any Buckeye coach with more than 25 games, and it's not even close.
What’s even more impressive is that Matta has done this in an era where the Big Ten is a deeper basketball conference with more good programs than in years when the Buckeyes struggled to finish in the upper half of a 10-team league. And he's done it the right way. He and his staff routinely back off recruits who hit the trail with their hand out.
If this year’s OSU team lacks verisimilitude, well, that’s probably because it’s a complete reboot. It still somehow managed to put together a complete enough game to beat Kentucky and, for long stretches at Purdue last week, the Buckeyes looked like the better team. There is talent on the roster, but it’s raw, and needs to be molded into a final product.
Matta knows there’s still a lot of work to be done. He said as much during his BTN interview Thursday night. This was right after his team squandered a big lead late at Illinois, only to bear down in overtime and gut out a win. That victory made Ohio State 6-3 at the midway point of the brutal conference schedule.
The Buckeyes went into the turn tied for fifth with No. 21 Purdue. Indiana, Iowa and Maryland look to be insanely good this year and could all make deep pushes into the NCAA tourney. There's no shame in finishing behind the likes of those three teams.
Still, it’ll get harder on the back nine.
It starts Sunday vs. Maryland. Then Ohio State has to go to Wisconsin. The Bucks will play nearly all the teams ahead of it down the stretch over the final nine games — the aforementioned Terps, Michigan, and a great Iowa team, sandwiched between a home-and-home with Sparty. Actually, No. 12 Michigan State is surprisingly behind the Buckeyes at the midway point. But, having to play all the league’s top teams except Purdue and Indiana in the stretch run makes things difficult.
Do the Buckeyes have another 6-3 conference run left in them? Probably not against that slate of games.
But this year isn’t about whether Matta keeps his streak of 20-win seasons alive. It isn’t about finishing in the top half of a great basketball conference. And it certainly shouldn’t cost Matta his job if neither of those things happens.
It's been beaten to death, but the team has no seniors and only one junior in Marc Loving. The rest are all freshmen and sophomores, although Kam Williams is a sophomore of the redshirt variety.
This season is more about tempering the steel for next year. It’s about getting better week after week, while living with youthful mistakes. And it’s about laying the foundation for a bright future with this young and talented group of players.
If things start to click down the stretch and Ohio State makes the tournament…well, that’s just icing on the cake. And it's a testament to the coaching job Matta has done.
It's not a ridiculous argument that Thad Matta built this program. I mean, even the revered Fred Taylor finished six of his 18 years at Ohio State at or under .500.
So call for Thad's head if you feel you must. But he's earned more than a modicum of patience from the masses with what he's accomplished, natty or no natty.
He alone should decide how his final chapter is written.
