With its top-six scorers returning, inexperience will not and should not be used as an excuse for Ohio State next season.
While the Buckeyes did not like to use it last year during what was an up-and-down season that resulted in an NIT bid, inexperience was reality as only two players — Marc Loving and Jae’Sean Tate — had experienced any sort of significant playing time at the collegiate level coming into the year.
That has changed now with Tate, Loving and the other top-four scorers from last year coming back, and Ohio State’s expectations should also shift a bit. And while Buckeyes assistant coach Greg Paulus wouldn’t get into specifics on the expectation level when meeting with the media Wednesday afternoon — why would he in May? — Paulus did say he likes the direction Ohio State is headed.
“For us, I know we’re excited about the guys we have coming in, the guys we have returning and we are really excited about the direction that we are heading in,” Paulus said. “I know as a staff and a program we like where we are.”
You’d hardly expect a coach to say anything different, but there’s a certain feel around the Ohio State program of late that makes it seem a bit more believable.
After Daniel Giddens, Mickey Mitchell and A.J. Harris all opted to transfer from the program shortly after last season ended, Ohio State seemed like it had hit quite the low point. But in the following weeks, the Buckeyes landed a pair of late commits to the 2016 class and the program also received a much-needed boost when it was announced Chris Jent was returning to Thad Matta’s staff as an assistant coach.
Things appeared as if they had been looking up from there.
“I think you always re-evaluate kind of what you’ve done in the past, where you are and where you want to be,” Paulus said. “For us, when you go through that process, I think it’s a case-by-case situation where you look at the data, you analyze it and you try to figure out maybe something you could have asked or something you could have done.
“But in terms of the culture and guys that make certain decisions to leave — whether it’s one, two or three years — for us, we want to coach guys and we want guys who want to be here, want to be Buckeyes and want to be here for the right reasons and are two feet in.”
Ohio State still has not decided what each assistant coach will be in charge of for the upcoming season, according to Paulus. For the last three years, Paulus ran the Buckeyes’ offense while Jeff Boals led the defense and Dave Dickerson handled the big guys. But with Boals moving on to become the head coach at Stony Brook and Ohio State bringing Jent — a coach with an offensive background — back into the fold, there’s some potential for shuffling.
One of the obvious choices would be to have Paulus slide over and coach the defense and allow Jent to be in control of the Buckeyes’ offense, while Dickerson continues to work with the big guys and Matta oversees the entire operation.
“I think Coach [Matta] looks into each situation each year and kind of tries to do the best thing that will give the team the best success,” Paulus said. “As he’s going through this process he’ll determine the responsibilities he would like to have for his staff and I’ll do whatever he asks me to do.”
Paulus also provided an update on the health of Tate, a junior-to-be who suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in March.
“Jae’Sean is progressing and he’s a guy that whenever you are walking by the training room he’s in there, he’s following orders by the doctors and trainers and it’s a process,” Paulus said. “It’s not something that is going to happen overnight for him and he understands that having done it before, but also his experience being a junior now he understands the time.
“He’s progressing in the fashion that we are hoping for.”
