Thad Matta announced on Monday he was immediately stepping down as head coach of the Ohio State men's basketball program after 13 years. He leaves Columbus as the winningest coach in program history, with five Big Ten regular-season championships, four tournament titles, two Final Fours and one national championship appearance to his name.
When Matta took the job ahead of the 2004-05 season, the Buckeyes were strapped with self-imposed sanctions as punishment for the transgressions of his predecessor, Jim O'Brien, who admitted to giving improper benefits to a recruit. Ohio State was not eligible for the postseason in his first season, but went on to make the NCAA Tournament nine of the next 10 years, a period of success never before seen in Columbus.
Winning directly correlated with Matta's success on the recruiting trail. The Buckeyes didn't see an immediate improvement because they were also limited to 11 scholarships in his first year and didn't sign any prospects in 2005 as a result. But his second class — dubbed the “Thad Five” — took the program from middle-of-the-pack in the Big Ten to a budding national power.
Future NBA first-round picks Greg Oden, Mike Conley Jr. and Daequan Cook — as well as four-star guard David Lighty and junior college transfer Othello Hunter — nearly delivered a national championship in their only year on campus. Ohio State then reeled off Top 6 finishes in four of the next five recruiting classes and once again advanced to the Final Four in 2012.
Around that time, Matta's health began to decline. A botched surgery years prior really began to take its toll, and it wasn't making things any easier on the recruiting trail — Matta recently shared a story about how another coach once told a player he was dying. But still, he signed two-consecutive Top 6 classes in 2014 and 2015.
Things changed significantly with that 2015 class, however.
Four members of the nation's fifth-ranked class transferred by the end of their freshman seasons without making any real contributions, while the lone remaining player — point guard JaQuan Lyle — stuck around for two erratic seasons before quitting the team in mid-April. Only after he was arrested and charged with public intoxication, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct after punching a police car in front of an officer was the news of his departure was made available to the media.
That was the beginning of the end for Matta. Not the on-court struggles or his ailing back, but the inability to get more out of one of the best recruiting classes in the country is why he and athletic director Gene Smith mutually decided to part ways.
“It was primarily obviously about recruiting,” Smith said, repeatedly calling it the lifeblood of the program.
The straw that broke the camel's back came about a month and a half ago, when Cincinnati four-star forward Darius Bazley decommitted from Ohio State.
“They didn't even make the NCAA Tournament this year. They didn't even make the NIT,” Bazley, the top-rated player in the state for the Class of 2018, told The Columbus Dispatch. “I looked into the recruits they have coming into next year. They didn't look to good for the future, so I felt like when my class came in, yeah, we would've been OK. But good enough to make the tournament? I don't know.”
The Buckeyes still hold commitments from Upper Arlington four-star guard Dane Goodwin and Versailles three-star small forward Justin Ahrens, but that's certainly not good enough for a program — and a fan base — that tasted a sustained period of success both on the recruiting trail and on the court under Matta.
“We weren't winning the battles in recruiting that I thought we might have a chance to win, as he did,” Smith said. “So as we started talking about that on Friday — it was three months or so after that meeting we had — the flow of the conversation took me to the reality that, you know what, as I said to him, 'Thad, maybe it's time for us to make a leadership change.'”
Matta, fighting through the tears, agreed. After all, the Buckeyes missed out on a few high-priority targets such as Mark Smith and M.J. Walker, as well as potential graduate transfers James Daniel and Cameron Johnson. Not to mention, starting center Trevor Thompson declared for the NBA Draft, reserve center Dave Bell transferred and Lyle quit the team this offseason.
Things weren't getting better anytime soon.
“[Recruiting] was challenging because of the situation that had occurred throughout the course of the season and after the season,” Matta said. “It made it very, very difficult.”
