Digging Into the Production of Thad Matta's Roster from Last Season to This Season

What feels like a growing segment of fans is officially tired of celebrating moral victories, feeling like the collective staff isn't able to recruit top-level players or develop the guys they have, evolving into a bottom-feeder in a down Big Ten, six straight years of declining wins, four straight years of increasing losses, and one lone NCAA tournament victory in what will soon be the last four seasons. 

Those realities have become even harder to swallow as the Buckeyes continue finding embarrassing ways to lose such as last Saturday's collapse at home against lowly Nebraska triggering another batch of comments from the coach in which he uses words such as "dumbfounded" while lamenting an inability to get through to his team or voicing frustration about lack of effort. 

On the other side of the ledger, Thad-backers point out the indisputable fact Matta is the best coach in program history as evidenced by his two Final Fours, nine NCAA tourney appearances, five B1G regular season championships, four B1G tournament titles and a strong list of blue chips who have traveled through Columbus. 

As the questions continue to mount on what is going on with the program, much has been made of Michigan State's Tom Izzo offering a passionate defense of Matta following a Buckeye win over what is currently a 16-11 Spartan team and then just yesterday, an article in the Dispatch in which former coaches Seth Greenberg and Dan Dakich lobbied on his behalf. 

On one hand, you can point out coaches and former coaches are part of a fraternity prompting them to largely stick up for one another no matter what facts and data might suggest. On the other, Izzo, Greenberg and Dakich have forgotten more about the game than most of us will ever know. 

Further muddying the issue is that even the folks who would prefer the program be taken over by a fresh voice unanimously respect Matta the man and all he did to bring Ohio State basketball back to national relevancy even if the program can't currently make that claim. 

With all that noise as a backdrop, there's zero chance athletic director Gene Smith won't give Matta at least one more year to right the ship so the real questions, since Matta isn't going anywhere for the time being unless he himself decides he doesn't want to be Ohio State's head coach, are (1) whether or not the players on the current roster have realized any individual improvement compared to last year and (2) even if they have, is that good enough when translated into overall team success? 

This year was supposed to see Ohio State turned things around thanks to the return of its top six players despite four freshman transferring out of the program in a move that Matta essentially cited as addition by subtraction. 

With Ohio State currently boasting a 15-13 overall record and a 5-10 mark in the B1G, good for 12th place, you might be surprised by the chart above showing much of the holdovers from last season realizing a statistical uptick that isn't simply the result of playing more minutes. 

So far this year, Jae'Sean Tate has increased his points per shot from 1.27 last year to 1.36 this season while shooting a better percentage from both the field (54.2%) and the stripe (58.3%) though that free throw percentage is still horrendous. There's also the question of why the staff allows him to attempt any three-point shots and his rebounds per minute have decreased from last season while his turnovers are up but he's seen a slight increase in assists. 

Senior Marc Loving's stats are fairly flat to last year though his points per shot metric is up to 1.36 and his FG% is up to 42.9% thanks largely to a nice boost in his shooting from distance which has increased to 39.1%. 

JaQuan Lyle, while frustrating to watch at times due to a perceived aloofness combined with what feels like production not matching perceived potential, has seen the largest statistical improvements of any of the returning top six.

Playing almost exactly the same minutes per game, Lyle's points per shot is up from 1.17 to 1.30, his FG% his spiked to a respectable 45.2% for a perimeter guy and his accuracy from distance is up more than 12 percentage points to 37.8% while his assists and turnovers per minute are trending in the right direction. I'm guessing these figures are a surprise to some. 

Trevor Thompson has also taken a step forward improving his points per shot to a team high 1.51 (for guys in the regular rotation) thanks to improved shooting from the field while his rebounds per minute have increased sharply and his turnovers have decreased. 

Probably the biggest outlier in terms of taking a step back is Kam Williams. Playing 10 more minutes per game, Williams has seen a decrease in his offensive efficiency sparked by his FG% dropping from 44.3% to 39.5% and his three-point accuracy dipping over six percentage points to 37.4% while his assists and turnovers per minute have also trended in the wrong direction. This could be the case of a role player being forced to play too big of a role. 

Fellow returnee Keita Bates-Diop has been on the shelf for quite some time and while there's no question his loss has been felt, it's tough to quantify by exactly how much.

No disrespect to KBD – I'm just as intrigued as anyone by how he might play next year – but considering his production this season wasn't lights out through a small sample size of nine games, his legend has somehow grown as some of those in Thad's corner have built him up to something he has yet proven to be to help explain away a dismal season.

David Bell, a three-star project to begin with, hasn't played enough to discuss further and since newcomers C.J. Jackson, Micah Potter and Andre Wesson don't have 2016 stats to compare against 2017, let's shift to looking at the team stats. 

The individual stat composites for Matta's returning players show a fair share of upward movement but how has that translated to overall team stats? 

Looking at the offensive stats, Matta's squad has improved its points per game, FG%, 3FG%, FT% and assist to turnover ratio in comparison to the 2015-16 outfit. 

While these increases can be taken as a positive, the context of where those metrics improved to on a national scale is still a bit sobering as only the team's FG%, which is currently at 46% for this season, makes the Top 100 nationally. 

The scoring offense stands as the 203rd most-prolific in the land while three-point accuracy slots 221st and FT% comes in at No. 217. 

A calling card of Thad's successful teams at Ohio State has been defense. 

Last year, what ended up as a 21-14 team still finished 37th nationally in FG% defense and 77th in scoring defense yielding 68 points per game.

This year, the defense has slipped ever-so-slightly to 88th in scoring defense and a still very respectable 50th in FG% defense while the steals per game and turnovers forced metrics continue to smell funny.

Bottom line, any small-to-medium gains in individual player performance simply haven't translated to a more effective team product no matter how many people will try to make you believe this year's squad is markedly better than its record would indicate. 

Last year's squad went 21-14, finished 76th in KenPom's rankings (9th-best in B1G) and was no better than the fourth best team in Ohio. This year's squad is 15-13, ranked 65th in KenPom's rankings (9th-best in B1G) and is no better than the fourth-best team in Ohio.

So whether or not Matta stays or goes, the numbers indicate a program treading water and in desperate need of an elite player (or two) if it wants to have any shot of once again becoming a nationally relevant program that's a threat to finish in the top-third of the Big Ten and capable of making even a modest run in an NCAA tournament.