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Men's Basketball Buckeye Tidbits 2005-2006 Season

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DDN

3/5/06

OSU NOTES
Fans back Buckeyes basketball program

By Doug Harris
Dayton Daily News

COLUMBUS | Ohio State's fan base in basketball has heretofore been lukewarm, at least compared to football. But the shock absorbers on the bandwagon may soon need to be replaced.

The Buckeyes will play before their fifth sell-out crowd of 18,500 this season when they host Purdue at noon today (Channel 7), bringing their average attendance to 15,390. They drew 13,716 fans per game last year.

The school has urged patrons to wear red to the game, and Internet message-board scribes have dubbed the promotion Scarlet Fever.

"That's awesome," coach Thad Matta said. "I love it. Hopefully, we'll get the word out."

Matta added, "I don't have a red suit, but I have a red tie."

No tears for

Sylvester?

Senior Day inevitably causes a few players to get misty-eyed, but forward Matt Sylvester doesn't plan to be one of them.

"It's an emotional day, but I guarantee you I won't be crying," the Cincinnati Moeller product said. "I've made a promise to my teammates that I won't. But I love Ohio State and what this school has done for us."

Big Ten title tops list

Matta, 38, has won four league titles in six seasons as a coach, including one at Butler and two at Xavier.

Asked to compare the improbable Big Ten crown this season with the others, he said: "This team probably had the farthest to get there.

(Considering) where we were projected to finish and winning a share of the No. 1 conference in the country (according to RPI ratings), this ranks at the top for me."

Bonuses to kick in

Matta's eight-year, $11-million contract is laden with incentives, and he will receive $20,000 for winning the Big Ten and $40,000 for reaching the NCAA tourney, plus get an automatic one-year extension.

"To be honest with you, I don't think I've ever read my contract," he said. "I know they're taking care of me. I have (an agent) who says, 'You just coach.' "

Contact Doug Harris at (937) 225-2125.
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DDN

3/6/06

OSU NOTES
Big Ten title surprises Matta, too

By Doug Harris
Dayton Daily News

COLUMBUS | — Ohio State was picked in a poll of Big Ten beat writers to finish sixth in the conference, but those scribes aren't the only ones who failed to see a championship season brewing.

Even second-year coach Thad Matta admitted he's pawing at his thinning scalp over his squad's unlikely title, saying he told a friend prior to playing Purdue on Sunday, "I really haven't figured out why we're so good."

Matta's conclusion is that he inherited a batch of tight-knit players.

"One of the first things I did (upon taking the job) was give them a T-shirt that said, 'Team,' " Matta said, "and they took that to heart."

Matta's voice quivered when he cited an example of the Buckeyes' brotherly bonds.

"I was in the training room working out, and Ron Lewis came in and asked our trainer, Vince O'Brien, 'Will Matt (Sylvester) be OK? We're not hurting him, are we?' " Matta said, referring to the senior forward who's been plagued by back problems.

"That's a guy who's taking (Lewis') starting spot, and he just wanted to make sure Matt was healthy. That's a team."

Foster fatigued

Is OSU guard Je'Kel Foster hitting the wall?

Although he continues to be a menace on defense and had another superb floor game against Purdue, Foster has averaged 36 minutes in his last six outings, and his field-goal percentage has begun to plummet.

He's shooting just 23.7 percent overall and 18.4 percent from 3-point range in that span. He missed his first 11 shots Sunday and finished 2-for-15.

The senior admitted his weary legs are "affecting my shot a little bit."

Matta makes dad proud

Matta was latching on to anyone within hugging distance after winning his fourth league title in six seasons as a coach, and he saved a warm embrace for his father, Jim.

Asked the secret of his son's success, the longtime high school coach said: "Players."

The elder Matta added: "He's got some kind of charisma that makes them want to play for him, but you've got to have players."

Contact Doug Harris at 225-2125.
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Dispatch

3/6/06

Banged-up Buckeyes to take time to heal, enjoy Big Ten title

Monday, March 06, 2006

Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH




College basketball being set up as it is, Ohio State coach Thad Matta was unable to celebrate a Big Ten men’s championship yesterday without being asked what’s next.

Does he think his team is ready to make a run in the postseason?

"Can I answer that tomorrow morning?" Matta said with a smile after the Buckeyes beat Purdue 76-57 in Value City Arena to win the conference title outright.

"I want to enjoy this. I don’t want to start thinking about that. I told the guys to enjoy it."

Terence Dials enjoyed it with an ice bag taped to his left elbow, which he said was hyperextended during the second half. He had an ankle retaped in the first half after coming down wrong on it and getting up gimpy.

Matt Sylvester enjoyed it prone on the floor in front of the bench in the second half, trying to alleviate the discomfort in a lower back that he estimated is 85 percent healthy.

Je’Kel Foster enjoyed it despite a frozen right hand — he is shooting 23.7 percent from the field in the past six games, including 7 of 38 from threepoint range — or maybe a pair of legs screaming for rejuvenation.

"I think, honestly, we need some rest," Matta said. "Guys are banged up.

We were limping around out there (against Purdue), kind of limping to the finish line.

"We’ve got till Friday at 12 o’clock."

That is tip-off time in the Big Ten tournament for topseeded Ohio State (23-4, 12-4), which will play the winner of a first-round game Thursday between Penn State and Northwestern in Indianapolis.

J.J. Sullinger said he did not know how much rest Matta will give the team beyond the one day mandated by NCAA rules.

"But no one on this team really wants to take too much time off," Sullinger said. "I think everybody’s anxious to come back to practice and get better as a team, tighten up the loose ends and get ready for Indy."

The loose ends yesterday included lax defense, especially inside, and yet another worrisome shooting game from outside the arc. Foster was not the only one missing attempted threes; the Buckeyes hit 4 of 24, the fifth time in six games they have made less than 25 percent from that range. They made 42.8 percent of their threes through their first 21 games and were below 30 percent only once in that span.

"Everybody needs a rest on our team," Foster said. "We don’t play till Friday, so we’re going to get a lot of rest and just try to come back ready to play."

[email protected]
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Dispatch

3/6/06

COMMENTARY

This season’s team wanted everyone to see the future is now

Monday, March 06, 2006


BOB HUNTER

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When the Ohio State men’s basketball team reported for practice last fall, its rickety, 2005-06 OSU bandwagon was almost empty. Meanwhile, a sleek, 2006-07 model next to it on the lot teemed with fans, reporters, fast friends and marketing types, even though it wasn’t going to budge an inch for another season.

Maybe that’s why the journey from there to here seems so incredible. This was a team most Buckeyes fans would have gladly seen thrown under the bus for a second time (the administration voluntarily sacrificed 2005 NCAA Tournament eligibility because of recruiting violations) to make sure the promising freshman class next season wouldn’t be jeopardized.

It was a team most media saw finishing somewhere in the lost, faceless middle of the Big Ten, down where an NCAA bid might be possible if conference tournaments didn’t produce too many upset winners and cut down on the at-large bids.

It was a team that most of us wouldn’t have given one chance in 100 of igniting the wild postgame party that exploded yesterday in Value City Arena, celebrating the school’s third undisputed Big Ten title in the past 44 years.

It was a team, all right. That’s the point.

"The first thing I gave them was a T-shirt that said ‘Team’ on it," OSU coach Thad Matta said. "I think they took that to heart, and that’s the reason (we’re here).

"I had a friend to my house last night, a football coach, and I told him I really can’t figure out why this team is so good. And he said, ‘I know why.

When you watch that ESPN thing, you don’t have a guy who’s a leading scorer or leading rebounder. You play as a team.’ "

There is obviously something to this. OSU sharpshooter Je’Kel Foster was 2 of 15 from the field yesterday, and the Buckeyes still had the offensive firepower to beat Purdue 76-57. Terence Dials has been consistently strong inside, but the other scoring leaders seem to change by the game, and the Buckeyes’ 23-4 record indicates there is almost always a hot hand in there somewhere to make it work.

Yesterday it was J.J. Sullinger, and to a lesser extent Jamar Butler and Matt Sylvester. Foster contributed five steals, five assists and eight rebounds.

This is what good teams do.

"I’m going to give you a great example," Matta said. "I’m in the training room (a couple of weeks ago) working out, and Ron Lewis comes in and asks to see Vince O’Brien, our trainer. He said, ‘Is Matt going to be OK?’ He said, ‘We’re not hurting him, (his back is) gonna be OK, right?’ Now that’s a guy who takes his starting spot when he’s not healthy, but he wanted to make sure Matt Sylvester was going to be OK and could play, and (I’m) sitting there saying ‘That’s a team.’ "

So why did these guys come together when so many more-talented groups don’t? To understand, we probably need to go back and take another look at that once-roomy bandwagon.

"No one gave us a chance," Dials said. "People across the country forgot about the Buckeyes, it seemed like. We never got the credit we thought we deserved, and we wanted to go out there and prove a lot of naysayers wrong. I think the championship we got today proved how hard we worked."

So it was that disrespect that brought them together?

"It was a lot of different things," Dials said, "but that’s one of the main ones."

Matta played a key role, as a coach should. He understood how tough it would be for the four seniors, watching everybody get juiced about a season in which they would never play. So he turned it into a positive, one about which he spoke after the game when he took the microphone and addressed the crowd.

"I asked these guys to lay the foundation for the future of the program," Matta said, "and it looks pretty damned good to me right now."

Bob Hunter is a columnist for The Dispatch

.

[email protected]
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PlainDealer

3/6/06

BIG TEN INSIDER
Dials makes late bid for MVP


Monday, March 06, 2006

Doug Lesmerises
Plain Dealer Reporter

Columbus- You could argue the Big Ten doesn't have a player of the year.

Here are 14 good reasons: Iowa's Greg Brunner, Adam Haluska and Jeff Horner, Illinois' Dee Brown and James Augustine, Wisconsin's Alando Tucker, Michigan State's Maurice Ager, Paul Davis and Shannon Brown, Indiana's Marco Killingsworth, Michigan's Daniel Horton, Northwestern's Vedran Vukusic and Ohio State's Terence Dials and Je'Kel Foster.

No one is a clear-cut MVP like Duke's J.J. Redick or Gonzaga's Adam Morrison or Connecticut's Rudy Gay or Villanova's Randy Foye.

Yet when the Big Ten announces its season awards on Tuesday, there's only one choice.

Foster, even with his outside shot in hiding, might be Ohio State's most valuable player. He's the Buckeyes' best defender, plays both guard positions and goes harder than anyone while knowing he basically has no backup.

But Dials is the Big Ten player of the year.

Asked two weeks ago if he had a player of the year candidate, OSU coach Thad Matta paused, then said, "I don't know. I think I have seven of them."

But that was before Dials went from complementing the Buckeyes' outside scoring to carrying the offense inside more often when the perimeter went cold.

Dials doesn't create his shots. He needs a great feed from Foster or Matt Sylvester or Jamar Butler once he gets position inside. And he's not an intimidating defensive presence like some inside players.

He does represent how a team with far from the best talent in the conference - that would be Michigan State or maybe Michigan or Indiana - won the conference. And he finished ninth in the conference in scoring (15.3 ppg) in rebounding (8.0 rpg).

That should be enough to make Dials the first Buckeye to win the award since Scoonie Penn shared it in 1999 with Michigan State's Mateen Cleaves.

We'd have him joined on the Big Ten first team by Tucker, Brunner, Brown and Foster. And Matta as coach of the year doesn't require a second thought.

Michigan in trouble:

By following a five-game losing streak with a four-game winning streak, 17-10 Indiana claimed a first-round bye in the Big Ten Tournament and slid off the bubble for the NCAA Tournament. Most projections have the conference getting seven teams in the tournament now. If anyone's in trouble, it's 18-9 Michigan, the team Indiana beat Saturday.

The No. 7 seed in the tournament, the Wolverines have lost six of eight, their RPI at 36, six spots behind the Hoosiers. Michigan opens the conference tourney Thursday with a first-round game against Minnesota, a team the Wolverines pounded by 16 points and 22 points this year.

The once-hot Gophers have lost three straight. If Michigan loses that game, and it's certainly possible, they should land in the NIT, and that's where they deserve to be.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

[email protected], 216-999-4479
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Lima

3/6/06

Suggested head: Butler, OSU grew together in title run
By JIM NAVEAU
419-993-2087
03/06/2006
[email protected]

COLUMBUS — Ohio State’s men’s basketball team and Jamar Butler both have come a long way this season.

Ohio State wasn’t even a longshot pick when people were predicting the Big Ten race last fall. And Butler, the Buckeyes’ sophomore point guard from Shawnee High School, was one of OSU’s question marks coming into the season after only nine games as a starter his freshman year.

Butler scored 15 points when Ohio State beat Purdue 76-57 on Sunday to win an outright Big Ten title for the first time since 1992.

It was the seventh time in the last nine games he has scored 10 points or more. For the season, he is averaging 10.1 points a game and a team-leading 4.6 assists. He is shooting 45 percent overall and 44 percent on 3-pointers after hitting only 33 percent overall and 23 from long range a year ago.

He’s no longer a question. He’s one of Ohio State’s answers.

Ohio State coach Thad Matta has called him the most improved player in the Big Ten all season.

He leads Big Ten point guards in assist to turnover ratio and defensively has shut down some of the most highly regarded point guards in the league.
Michigan’s Daniel Horton hit 5 of 17 shots and 4 of 16 in two games Butler guarded him. Michigan State’s Drew Neitzel was 1-of-5 and 1-of-4 in two matchups and Illinois’ Dee Brown was 5-of-13 in his one game against Butler.

Before the season began, one newspaper story in a large daily in another part of the state dismissed Butler as “an offensive liability.”

Things have changed in a hurry. Sunday, another writer said before the game he was debating whether he should make Butler a first-team All-Big Ten selection on his ballot.

Butler said his greatest progress came in his point guard skills and his shooting.

“Running my team, being a true point guard, a good point guard and just playing within Coach Matta’s system and winning games,” he said, listing his improvements. “It’s a great feeling. I worked on a lot on my shot and my ball-handling in the off-season. I’ve come a long way. I’m happy right now.”
Butler’s improvement silenced any doubts about the 2004 Mr. Basketball’s ability to play at Ohio State. As a team, the Buckeyes did much the same thing.

Ohio State was coming off a 20-win season in 2005, but a lot of Ohio State fans were already looking ahead to next season, when nationally ranked recruits like Greg Oden and Daequan Cook will arrive.

Winning the Big Ten title this season didn’t get much discussion until the last month or so.

Matta used this as motivation for the Buckeyes.

“They (the preseason predictions) had us like fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, somewhere in that area. We kind of practiced with that on our minds and coach reminded us of that every day and look how it turned out,” Butler said.

J.J. Sullinger spoke to the same theme after Sunday’s game. “We’ve kind of flown under the radar to this point,” he said. “But you’ve got to remember Ohio State now when you talk about contenders,” he said.

Butler, who will be the only returning starter next season, paid tribute to the Buckeyes’ four seniors — Terence Dials, Je’Kel Foster, Matt Sylvester and Sullinger.

“Our seniors really stepped up the last part of the season and we just followed,” he said.

Butler did his share of leading too. What follows in the next two years for him should be very interesting.

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