After Thad Matta made the decision to remove freshman point guard JaQuan Lyle from the starting lineup prior to Ohio State’s game against Penn State on Jan. 25, the Buckeyes’ head coach admitted he was curious to see how Lyle would handle the situation both mentally and from an on-court perspective.
Lyle scored six points that night against the Nittany Lions, then scored two points the following game at Illinois and had just one point three days later in a loss to Maryland. He took just nine shots over that three-game stretch and made only two. Lyle’s response, on the floor, wasn’t exactly ideal.
As far as the mental part of that equation? Lyle addressed that Friday prior to Ohio State’s upcoming game at Rutgers scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday.
“When I was going through that little bad spell,” he said, “I was feeling sorry for myself that I wasn’t starting.”
Matta saw that, too, and addressed it with his talented freshman guard.
“[Lyle] had said he was feeling sorry for himself and I said, ‘How did that work for you?’" Matta recalled. "He said, ‘Not very good.’ I said, ‘Well, stop feeling sorry yourself and just play.'"
After the Buckeyes' loss to Maryland was when that finally clicked for Lyle. He had one of his best weeks of practice of what has been an up-and-down season leading up to Ohio State’s game at Wisconsin last Thursday.
The Buckeyes lost, 79-68, but Lyle had one of his best games of the year scoring 27 points and dishing out four assists off the bench. Without Lyle, Ohio State was not in the game against the Badgers with a chance to win down the stretch.
That performance forced Matta to put Lyle back into the starting lineup for Tuesday’s game against Northwestern. And after a somewhat shaky first half, Lyle scored 13 second-half points to finish with a team-high 16 for the game to go along with six rebounds. His 3-pointer from the wing with 3 minutes, 29 seconds remaining broke a 56-all game and gave Ohio State a lead it wouldn’t relinquish on the way to a 71-63 victory.
It was a shot he probably would not have taken a few weeks back because Lyle admits he is very hard on himself and if his shot wasn’t falling early, he had a tendency earlier in the year to stop shooting.
“I think it’s definitely just growing up,” Lyle said. “Coach Matta always tells everybody he’s never going to take you out or get mad at you at the shot that you shoot. It’s the shots that you don’t shoot or you’re not playing hard.”
Lyle appears to have turned a corner as Ohio State’s season winds down. It’s good for this stretch run, of course, but it also benefits the Buckeyes in the future. Lyle is an incredibly talented player who struggled a bit with confidence early on in his freshman year. Ohio State is a much better team when he is playing at this level.
“I think [Lyle] has responded pretty well, to be honest,” Matta said. “I like the level he’s playing at right now, but there’s some things that have got to come from within and hopefully the light is on now.”
