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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
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12/26/05
12/26/05
Mayes gets through maze to OSU
Buckeyes junior grew up in a strict group home
Monday, December 26, 2005
Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
</IMG> NEAL C . LAURON | DISPATCH Sylvester Mayes attended two high schools and a junior college before landing at Ohio State.
The two words written on the piece of paper are embedded in Joe Huppenthal’s memory. They will never leave him.
Huppenthal is the boys basketball coach at Clay High School in South Bend, Ind. For the better part of three years there, he coached Sylvester Mayes, now a junior on the Ohio State men’s basketball team.
One day, Huppenthal had Mayes write down his goals in life. The first was to play in the NBA. No surprise there. As for the rest . . .
"One was, ‘To live,’ " Huppenthal said.
"An 18-year-old kid, and that was actually one of his goals — not getting shot, not being in a gang, not being in drugs.
"I’ll never forget that. But I knew where he was coming from."
Mayes comes from the same town the average sports fan associates with the University of Notre Dame. His high school sits a couple of miles north of the golden dome, on the other side of the Indiana Tollway.
Where Mayes came from, though, might as well have been the other side of the world.
At the time he wrote those words, Mayes said, "South Bend was getting pretty rough. There are a lot of people who are not not here anymore who were around when I was young. They had talent, but they didn’t use it."
Mayes’ talent for playing basketball was his ticket out. But his would not be an umimpeded drive to the goal.
Mayes never played for his junior high school. He never was eligible. The oldest of Jackie Foster’s seven children, and without a father to guide him, he followed his own compass.
"I was very strong-willed," he said. "I was used to doing things on my own."
Early in his eighth-grade year, the St. Joseph County Division of Family Resources ordered that he and his two next-oldest siblings, a brother and sister, be placed in foster care. Sylvester said his mother could not adequately provide for all of the children.
By that time, Huppenthal had begun to involve himself in Mayes’ life because he saw Mayes had a chance to make it. Huppenthal went so far as to investigate adopting Mayes until learning it would violate Indiana High School Athletic Association rules.
"Someone needed to reel this kid in," Huppenthal said.
"In our society today, unfortunately, so many of these kids are left behind. You can only invest so much time in so many. Can you do it with 20 kids? No. But I’m a basketball coach, and I invested time in him because he was a talent. I had to get him in school because he was good enough, and if you’re good enough, they’re going to find you.
"We spent a lot of time with Sylvester in the summer (before ninth grade). We prepped him. We knew what a talent he was and it would be a shame for it to go to waste. He was hardheaded, stubborn, you name it. He fought us tooth and nail. But he knew we would take care of him."
Mayes was eligible as a freshman at Clay and averaged 11.7 points per game for the varsity. As a sophomore, he averaged 24.9 before an altercation with a teacher resulted in a 10-day suspension and ended his season. As a junior, he was averaging 22.9 points and Clay was 11-3 when he failed a Latin mid-term and became ineligible for the second semester.
Without Mayes, "the season goes into the you-know-what," Huppenthal said.
Without the season, so did Mayes’ life.
"I wasn’t going to school. I was losing focus," he said. "I was around my friends and I wanted to have fun, hang out."
Not long after Clay’s season ended, Mayes told Huppenthal one day, "They’re moving me. They’re picking me up tomorrow and taking me to Fort Wayne."
Huppenthal looked at Mayes and said, "What are you talking about?"
"I guess one of our special-education teachers (at Clay) had made some calls and told them the kid wasn’t (on track) to graduate, even though he was," Huppenthal said. "So they moved him to Fort Wayne. He was here one minute, gone the next."
Mayes was placed in a group home with four other boys in Fort Wayne, Ind., 80 miles southeast of South Bend, and enrolled at Wayne High School for the rest of his junior year and his senior year.
The rules of the group home were more strict than those of his former foster home. Older males acted as "father figures" to the boys, Mayes said. "They told you you’ve got to do this and this and this. They made you do chores and get a job (Mayes worked part time at a Family Dollar store). They showed you what life is like."
Mayes was homesick at times. Once, early in his senior year, he bought a ticket and rode a bus home in hopes of rejoining the Clay team. Huppenthal sent him back.
Some other 18-year-old, uprooted by the system twice in four years and moved 80 miles from home, might have rebelled, given up, dropped out, returned to the streets.
Somehow, Mayes realized all of it was in his best interests. He spoke often with an older halfbrother, Marlon — they share the same absentee birth father — who counseled him to stay in school, stay in sports, get an education and do the right thing.
"I just felt like if I stayed on the right path that everything would fall into place," Mayes said. "I never lost hope. I always knew I could play basketball. It was just a matter of where."
In the little more than a year that Mayes was at Wayne High School, he was never a problem, said Murray Mendenhall, his coach there. He missed one day of school. He averaged 26.9 points per game as a senior. He was ranked by one recruiting service as the 19 th-best player in the class of 2003.
He had the game to go Division I but lacked the grade-point average. He would have to attend junior college for two years. Again, he would not be deterred.
"I just figured I had to take the long route," Mayes said. "I just had to pick a good school."
He chose Redlands Community College in El Reno, Okla., where coach Steve Eck has a reputation for running a structured, demanding program that prepares his players to succeed on and off the court. Redlands has had the highest grade-point average nationally among Division I junior colleges for the past four years, according to the school’s media guide.
"On the court, the big thing for Sylvester here was to compete at a high level on every pass," Eck said. "Not just every possession, but every pass.
"Off the court, going to school . . . applying himself was probably a new experience. At first, we battled that. He’s strong-willed. But he ended up with over a 3-point GPA and he kind of took pride in that a little bit."
Ohio State coach Thad Matta and assistant John Groce had known about Mayes since they coached at Butler in 2000-01, when Mayes was breaking out as a sophomore at Clay. When they moved to Ohio State in July 2004 and needed a guard, they immediately targeted Mayes. They knew about his talent. They knew his life story. They also knew he had played for Eck.
"We knew what the culture was like at Redlands," Groce said, "so we knew he had been in a disciplined environment for two years."
Mayes is adjusting again in his first season with the Buckeyes. There is stiff competition for playing time at guard and he is learning what it takes to get minutes from Matta.
"In junior college, you could really just play," he said. "There’s a lot more to understand about (Division I) basketball."
Basketball, though, is only the half of it. It is only the ticket.
Mayes is the first member of his family to attend college. Not surprisingly, he wants to play ball as long as he can and someday get paid for it. But he has other plans, too. He dreams of owning a business. Or being a coach. Or even running a group home.
"I feel like I can help a lot of kids out there," he said.
Two of them are his own — a daughter, Ariyah, 1, and a son, Jameer, 8 months. They live with their mother in Fort Wayne, but Mayes said he sees them as often as he can, including Christmas this past weekend. He said that, like his half-brother Marlon, they are a motivation for him to make something of himself so he can be the kind of father to them that he never had.
"I’ve always told him not to let his childhood spoil his manhood," Marlon said. "Think past that. That’s gone. Now it’s time for us to have kids and to make it better for them."
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
link
12/30/05
12/30/05
Big Ten preview
By Clark Kellogg, Yahoo! Sports
December 29, 2005
Last year, the Big Ten was maligned as being "down" (deservedly so). But then three teams from the conference made it to the Elite 8 and two got to the Final Four.
This year, the Big Ten will be lauded as one of the top three conferences in the country (deservedly so as well), but might not get a team to the Elite 8 this time around. My point is: tournament success is more a function of matchups than perceived conference strength.
Even though the Elite 8 might not be in the cards, at this point the Big Ten appears to have eight teams that could be tournament-worthy in March. Only Northwestern, Penn State and Purdue seem to be significant long shots to make the field.
Not much separates the top eight teams in the conference, and Indiana and Michigan State are showing the most tournament potential, while Illinois and Ohio State have garnered impressive early-season wins. Thus, I currently put the Big Ten on par with the ACC, with both conferences a notch below the Big East.
The call is too close between Indiana and Michigan State for me to pick a conference winner right now. But since some of you like to call me out when I make the wrong pick, here goes: IU has an advantage inside while the Spartans have the edge on the perimeter, and both teams' benches are works in progress. But since I'm a former inside guy, I'll lean ever so slightly toward the Hoosiers, although I know good guards influence winning or losing at least as much as good big guys do.
Indiana Hoosiers
News | Schedule | Roster
D.J. White and Marco Killingsworth will be the top inside pair in the conference (and one of the best duos in the country) once White is fully recovered from a broken foot. Both can score inside, will demand double teams and can make the outside shot. White is also an excellent shot-blocker and will anchor the Hoosiers' inside defense.
Surrounding them are good athletes that are solid on both offense and defense. The way I see it, Mike Davis and his staff have a versatile roster with which to work. The only trouble spots so far for the Hoosiers have been committing too many turnovers and relying a little too much on the three. But White's return to form should help tighten up both areas.
The way I see it, Mike Davis and his staff have a versatile roster to work with. The only trouble spots so far for the Hoosiers have been committing too many turnovers and relying a little too much on the three. But White's return to form should help tighten up both areas.
Michigan State Spartans
News | Schedule | Roster
The Spartans are also poised to have a great year. Senior center Paul Davis is playing terrific basketball. He's a "20/10" guy with a strong presence on offense and defense, and very few big guys can run the floor the way he does.
On the perimeter, Maurice Ager is a splendid shooter, scorer and defender. Shannon Brown continues to get better in all areas and is one of the best athletes in the country. Drew Neitzel is as "efficient as a heat pump" running the high-octane offense, but he is capable of scoring more, and for MSU to become an elite team he'll have to do just that.
The bench is still a work in progress but shows signs of promise. And although, the defense is not yet up to Tom Izzo's standards, it should improve with his prodding. The athleticism and size are there, it's just a matter of mindset and focus for the Spartans.
Illinois Fighting Illini
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The Illini have gotten excellent leadership and production from seniors James Augustine and Dee Brown. Augustine is playing with confidence and poise while averaging close to a double-double. Brown's speed and timely scoring keep opponents worried. Brian Randle is a solid and versatile defender and Jamar Smith anchors a productive bench.
Illinois is a very good defensive team that does a good job rebounding, too. It is second to Iowa in field-goal defense and No. 1 in three-point defense. It leads the Big Ten in rebounding margin and offensive rebounds. Offensively, the Illini present a balanced attack with eight players averaging between five and 15 points per game – and they take good care of the ball.
But it's on defense that the Illini really excel. They just don't allow teams to get a lot of good or easy shots, and because of this, Illinois has a chance to win the conference title. But to actually do that, the free-throw shooting must improve and Randle has to become the other double-figure scorer in the starting lineup.
Ohio State Buckeyes
News | Schedule | Roster
The Buckeyes only have 10 scholarship players and the rotation is tight – just the way Thad Matta likes it. The team's strength is its perimeter game and the inside play of Terence Dials (although he's been a bit inconsistent).
Senior guard Je'Kel Foster, an old-school player, has been superb. He defends, is smart with the ball, scores, makes big shots and is unflappable. Sophomore Jamar Butler is very good at the point, and wingman J.J Sullinger is, so far, the team's most indispensable player
Off the bench Sylvester Mayes brings energy, speed and tough defense, and Ron Lewis provides instant and offense – attacking the hoop, drawing fouls and making big shots.
The Buckeyes are a much-improved free-throw shooting team, but they need to limit their turnovers and keep improving on the glass. And, with no other inside scorer, Dials needs to stay out of foul trouble and finish in the paint.
Wisconsin Badgers
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The Badgers are third in the conference in scoring at 80 points per game and have one of the league's top duos in Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor. Both are excellent at attacking the basket off the dribble and are combining for more than 30 points per game.
Up front there is good size and mobility with Brian Butch, Jason Chappell and Ray Nixon, and the bench is providing additional offense as well. The Badgers need Butch and Chappell to continue improving as consistent inside players (at both ends), just as they need Taylor to continue to develop as a scoring point guard – his assists need to go up while his turnovers go down. On the upside, Taylor's three-point shooting and speed with the ball keep constant pressure on opposing defenses, and it's just a matter of time before his judgment matches his skill.
Bo Ryan has a team that appears to be a little more explosive than in the past, and being the excellent coach that he is, he will look to maximize that while continuing to emphasize solid defense. I don't think the Badgers will win the Big Ten, but don't be surprised if they're in the hunt late in February.
Iowa Hawkeyes
News | Schedule | Roster
The Hawkeyes currently lead the conference in field-goal defense and are one of its most experienced teams with four starters returning. Of their top nine players, six are upperclassmen.
Greg Brunner leads the team in scoring and rebounding and is a tough matchup. He's a rugged 6-foot-7 forward with a nice perimeter stroke and good inside moves. Adam Haluska, a junior, is a big, physical guard who does everything well. Erik Hansen provides shot blocking, and Jeff Horner is the quarterback.
Overall, it's defense that will keep the Hawkeyes in almost every game, but better efficiency on offense is needed to join the top dogs in the conference.
Michigan Wolverines
News | Schedule | Roster
Michigan's season was derailed last year by injuries and the late-season suspension of point guard and top scorer Daniel Horton. But this year the Wolverines have a full roster together and are poised to be an NCAA tournament team – and the expectations are certainly there.
Horton is the catalyst. The senior has proven to be a clutch shot-maker and will need to play at a high level for the Wolverines to be their best. He's averaging 15 points per game and his assist-to-turnover ratio is over two-to-one. He also has emerged as a leader on the floor but won't have to carry the load alone.
Courtney Sims leads the team in scoring and blocked shots and can be dominant if he plays with more attitude and improves his passing out of the post. Abram is the other double-figure scorer and is a solid defender, too. Graham is undersized as a center/power forward, but currently leads the team in rebounds. Harris is a versatile defender and better shooter than his numbers indicate.
Minnesota Golden Gophers
News | Schedule | Roster
Minnesota is a very intriguing team. The Gophers have perhaps the most exciting player in the conference in Vincent Grier. The 6-foot-5 senior is a "difference maker" and legitimate player of the year candidate who averages 19 points, five boards and three steals per game. He is a creator and playmaker who can impact the action at both ends.
Dan Monson has 10 players in double-figure minutes and utilizes his team's athleticism and depth to force 18 turnovers per game. The Gophers do a good job scoring off those turnovers, and are also getting solid work in the set offense from Spencer Tollackson and Dan Coleman.
With four senior starters, a young but talented group of reserves and one of the deepest and most athletic rosters in the league, the Gophers could surprise some folks with a top-tier finish.
Northwestern Wildcats
News | Schedule | Roster
Northwestern has the conference's top scorer in Vedran Vukusic, but only one other player averages double figures – Mohamed Hachad (he also leads the team in rebounds). Vukusic is a clever passer and a terrific shooter, and Hachad is an athletic all-around player.
But that's not enough in the Big Ten.
Lacking a player to score in the paint struggling to create points off its defense, Northwestern relies heavily on halfcourt execution and perimeter shooting. Almost half of its field-goal attempts are from the three-point line, but the Wildcats are making just 27 percent of them. Because Northwestern plays a very deliberate style and does not pursue offensive rebounds, its defense is always set and is usually solid. However, the lack of outstanding perimeter shooting will keep the Wildcats near the league's bottom.
Penn State Nittany Lions
News | Schedule | Roster
Penn State is making progress. Ed DeChellis has his undersized team competing hard and is off to its best start in some time. The Nittany Lions don't start a player over 6-foot-6, but everybody rebounds and leading scorers Geary Claxton, Jamelle Cornley and Travis Parker are all athletic and play bigger than their listed height.
Penn State employs a nine-man rotation and eight of those players average between five and 15 points per game. Despite being undersized, they are outrebounding teams by four and doing a solid job on defense.
Winning on the road will be a challenge for such a young team, but enough wins will be had to stay out of last place in the league.
Purdue Boilermakers
News | Schedule | Roster
Purdue lost leading-scorer Carl Landry after just five games this season (the senior forward decided to redshirt having not fully recovered from offseason knee surgery). That left first-year coach Matt Painter with three freshmen as his top scorers: Nate Minnoy, Chris Lutz and Korey Spates. All are talented guards who are averaging double figures.
Coach Painter will re-establish a foundation of hard work and unselfishness as his talented freshmen endure growing pains. But unless the Boilermakers get career years from the upperclassmen, it will be a struggle to be competitive.
Clark Kellogg is Yahoo! Sports' NCAA men's basketball analyst. Send him a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
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crazybuckfan40
Head Coach
Very nice write-up by Kellog. Looks like he has been watching close this year.
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Press thinks Thad is great!
Poor recruiting + no point guards = NIT (if you're lucky, LSU)
By Greg Doyle http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/9130057
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State is enjoying a magical season, and LSU is not. It's as simple as that, and it's as simple as this: Ohio State 78, LSU 76.
Thad Matta knows he has the right players to 'get it done.' (AP)
That was the final score Saturday, when LSU visited Columbus with more height, depth and talent. But Ohio State has more guards, and Ohio State has a coach who gets it, and so Ohio State beat what should have been -- but will never be -- a better basketball team.
OSU senior Matt Sylvester's 3-pointer with 5.5 seconds left capped Ohio State's methodical rally from a 73-58 deficit with 5½ minutes left. The Buckeyes outscored LSU 20-3 in that final stretch for reasons that can be attributed to X's-and-O's or the home-court advantage, but should be attributed to recruiting.
OSU coach Thad Matta knows how to do it.
LSU coach John Brady just thinks he does.
Brady recruits like he's ordering from a restaurant: He'll take one of these, and one of those, and holy cow, everyone says that's good, so he'll have one of them, too. The roster arrives, and it looks beautiful. LSU has enormous skill, led by frontcourt dessert items Glen Davis, Tasmin Mitchell and the woefully underrated Tyrus Thomas.
But Brady never orders enough veggies. LSU has one guard who can play at the NCAA Tournament level, Darrel Mitchell, and only if he's playing on the wing. Unfortunately for LSU, he's not. After three years as the Tigers' shooting guard, he's being forced to run the offense. The result Saturday was predictable. After helping stake the Tigers to that 15-point lead, Mitchell tired and the LSU offense expired.
"Thad knows that's what we don't have -- stability at the lead guard," Brady said. "We have a freshman (Ben Voogd) who's not quite ready, and Darrel Mitchell's been a two-guard for three years. And therein lies the problem with our team."
Look deeper, Coach. LSU's problem starts with a coaching staff that knows how to read the annual Top 100 recruiting lists but doesn't know how to evaluate a point guard. This began three years ago when Brady and Co. picked a me-first scoring guard from Houston named Tack Minor over a less-regarded, but in-state, point guard named Jarrius Jackson.
Minor is in the middle of a lost junior season, having missed the first five games for academic reasons and probably out the rest of the year with a knee injury. Even when healthy, Minor is not the answer. His career assist-turnover is barely even, and last season he took more shots per minute than anyone, including SEC player of the year Brandon Bass. LSU reached the NCAA Tournament but was upset in the first round by UAB.
Jackson is a star point guard at Texas Tech. Another should-be LSU point guard, Ryan Francis, is enjoying a stellar freshman season at Southern California. Francis is a native of Baton Rouge, but he was barely ranked among the country's top 250 players by most recruiting analysts. LSU passed. Francis headed West, where he is averaging 7.1 points and 3.8 assists for a surprisingly good USC team.
Saturday, in those final 5½ minutes, LSU committed five turnovers and made just one field goal. In the final minute, when a single basket would have been enough to hold off the Buckeyes, LSU managed two horrible, long-range attempts.
"What we don't have, (a point guard), really showed its head in the last two, three minutes," Brady said. "It's going to be something we'll be fighting the rest of the season."
While LSU barrels toward a first-round NIT home game, No. 21 Ohio State is heading toward the NCAA Tournament bid it should have had last season. The Buckeyes won 20 games and had a better RPI than two other 2005 at-large teams, Iowa State and North Carolina State, but were taken out of the postseason equation by their own administration. OSU officials, mindful of the NCAA's investigation into former coach Jim O'Brien, chose in December 2004 to sacrifice that season in hopes of saving this one.
The NCAA has yet to rule on O'Brien, Ohio State or its 2006 postseason status, but OSU officials are optimistic the team will be postseason-eligible. And optimistic they should be. If the NCAA penalizes these Buckeyes for events that transpired when they were in middle school, the NCAA will have failed Ohio State.
While Matta inherited most of his current players from O'Brien, he put his own fingerprints on this roster by jam-packing it with guards. (Take notes, LSU.) Matta already had O'Brien signees Je'Kel Foster, Jamar Butler and J.J. Sullinger when he landed Bowling Green transfer Ron Lewis and juco transfer Sylvester Mayes. That quintet of guards helped harass LSU until the Tigers cracked.
"I didn't want to be in the position we were in with seven minutes to go -- LSU is a tremendous team -- but I thought if we could keep it close, our guards would help us get it done," Matta said.
That's what guards do. They get it done.
Forwards and centers? They go to LSU and wonder who in the world will pass them the ball.
Poor recruiting + no point guards = NIT (if you're lucky, LSU)
By Greg Doyle http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/9130057
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State is enjoying a magical season, and LSU is not. It's as simple as that, and it's as simple as this: Ohio State 78, LSU 76.
Thad Matta knows he has the right players to 'get it done.' (AP)
That was the final score Saturday, when LSU visited Columbus with more height, depth and talent. But Ohio State has more guards, and Ohio State has a coach who gets it, and so Ohio State beat what should have been -- but will never be -- a better basketball team.
OSU senior Matt Sylvester's 3-pointer with 5.5 seconds left capped Ohio State's methodical rally from a 73-58 deficit with 5½ minutes left. The Buckeyes outscored LSU 20-3 in that final stretch for reasons that can be attributed to X's-and-O's or the home-court advantage, but should be attributed to recruiting.
OSU coach Thad Matta knows how to do it.
LSU coach John Brady just thinks he does.
Brady recruits like he's ordering from a restaurant: He'll take one of these, and one of those, and holy cow, everyone says that's good, so he'll have one of them, too. The roster arrives, and it looks beautiful. LSU has enormous skill, led by frontcourt dessert items Glen Davis, Tasmin Mitchell and the woefully underrated Tyrus Thomas.
But Brady never orders enough veggies. LSU has one guard who can play at the NCAA Tournament level, Darrel Mitchell, and only if he's playing on the wing. Unfortunately for LSU, he's not. After three years as the Tigers' shooting guard, he's being forced to run the offense. The result Saturday was predictable. After helping stake the Tigers to that 15-point lead, Mitchell tired and the LSU offense expired.
"Thad knows that's what we don't have -- stability at the lead guard," Brady said. "We have a freshman (Ben Voogd) who's not quite ready, and Darrel Mitchell's been a two-guard for three years. And therein lies the problem with our team."
Look deeper, Coach. LSU's problem starts with a coaching staff that knows how to read the annual Top 100 recruiting lists but doesn't know how to evaluate a point guard. This began three years ago when Brady and Co. picked a me-first scoring guard from Houston named Tack Minor over a less-regarded, but in-state, point guard named Jarrius Jackson.
Minor is in the middle of a lost junior season, having missed the first five games for academic reasons and probably out the rest of the year with a knee injury. Even when healthy, Minor is not the answer. His career assist-turnover is barely even, and last season he took more shots per minute than anyone, including SEC player of the year Brandon Bass. LSU reached the NCAA Tournament but was upset in the first round by UAB.
Jackson is a star point guard at Texas Tech. Another should-be LSU point guard, Ryan Francis, is enjoying a stellar freshman season at Southern California. Francis is a native of Baton Rouge, but he was barely ranked among the country's top 250 players by most recruiting analysts. LSU passed. Francis headed West, where he is averaging 7.1 points and 3.8 assists for a surprisingly good USC team.
Saturday, in those final 5½ minutes, LSU committed five turnovers and made just one field goal. In the final minute, when a single basket would have been enough to hold off the Buckeyes, LSU managed two horrible, long-range attempts.
"What we don't have, (a point guard), really showed its head in the last two, three minutes," Brady said. "It's going to be something we'll be fighting the rest of the season."
While LSU barrels toward a first-round NIT home game, No. 21 Ohio State is heading toward the NCAA Tournament bid it should have had last season. The Buckeyes won 20 games and had a better RPI than two other 2005 at-large teams, Iowa State and North Carolina State, but were taken out of the postseason equation by their own administration. OSU officials, mindful of the NCAA's investigation into former coach Jim O'Brien, chose in December 2004 to sacrifice that season in hopes of saving this one.
The NCAA has yet to rule on O'Brien, Ohio State or its 2006 postseason status, but OSU officials are optimistic the team will be postseason-eligible. And optimistic they should be. If the NCAA penalizes these Buckeyes for events that transpired when they were in middle school, the NCAA will have failed Ohio State.
While Matta inherited most of his current players from O'Brien, he put his own fingerprints on this roster by jam-packing it with guards. (Take notes, LSU.) Matta already had O'Brien signees Je'Kel Foster, Jamar Butler and J.J. Sullinger when he landed Bowling Green transfer Ron Lewis and juco transfer Sylvester Mayes. That quintet of guards helped harass LSU until the Tigers cracked.
"I didn't want to be in the position we were in with seven minutes to go -- LSU is a tremendous team -- but I thought if we could keep it close, our guards would help us get it done," Matta said.
That's what guards do. They get it done.
Forwards and centers? They go to LSU and wonder who in the world will pass them the ball.
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I'm not so sure they're as bad as the writer makes them out to be. That was an astoundingly athletic team I watched yesterday, actually two of them. One was best for 54.5 minutes, the other for 5.5, we know who won. I don't think the senior point was bad at all, even though he was a shooting guard last year. The other kid has a lot of promise too, he will learn to pay attention to the shot clock.. I think without a doubt you'll see them be quite competitive in the SEC, maybe even finish in the top half of their division. The future is bright as well as most of the talent are freshmen or sophs. They will only improve as the year goes on.
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crazybuckfan40
Head Coach
It is nice to have 4 guys avg. double figure with Butler at 9 pts a game and Syl could go for DD on any given nite.
I really like this team, they are very fun to watch.
I really like this team, they are very fun to watch.
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