Thad Matta has long had a plan to get his teams to cut down on turnovers.
Ohio State’s head coach knows he just isn’t allowed to actually implement it.
“If we had a shock collar for our guys then I guarantee you we would be better,” Matta joked Friday afternoon. “Now, I don’t think that we can do that, but I’ve said that for a long time that if we could put shock collars on them then they’d jump and that would definitely, definitely cut down on turnovers.”
“Guys would be thinking, ‘Is he going to hit the button or not? OK, I better just make the safe play.’”
Joking aside, turnovers are what plagued Matta’s team in Wednesday’s 63-61 loss at No. 6 Virginia. The Buckeyes committed 20 of them — and three in the final three minutes of the game — and point guard JaQuan Lyle was responsible for eight all by himself.
Ohio State’s late-game execution was poor and the Cavaliers took full advantage, overcoming a 16-point first-half deficit to avoid the upset bid from the Buckeyes. Matta knows the giveaways cost his team against one of the best defensive groups in the country and moving forward it’s something Ohio State must tighten up.
“With the turnovers we had the other night, we have to play smarter,” Matta said. “There’s a time and a place for trying to thread a needle. Sometimes the simplest thing you can do is just throw it to the open guy and moving a defense is something that is very, very advantageous to score.”
“You look at the good possessions we had the other night, the ball was flying around. Guys were cutting, we were cutting behind the defense and I say that from the standpoint of that’s kind of gotta be how we play. Now, I don’t want guys to not take risks and that sort of thing but they have to be a little bit more calculated just in terms of cutting down. Twenty turnovers and you shoot 50 percent, I’m trying to explain to these guys that’s problematic.”
The good news for Ohio State is there’s plenty of time to fix the issue. It’s only the first week of December and the Buckeyes have plenty of time to fix their late-game execution so they can turn games like Wednesday night’s into wins in the future.
Ohio State hosts Fairleigh Dickinson on Saturday afternoon and Florida Atlantic on Tuesday before back-to-back games against Connecticut and UCLA.
“The silly turnovers,” freshman Micah Potter said, “I think if we can get rid of those and continue to execute, we’ll be all right.”
