Newsflash Davey, virtually every team in college basketball loses their last games of the year. Not sure if you realize it, but only one team wins the NC in any given year. This isn't football where half of the top-10 teams can win their last game of the year.
And as for Matta not taking his teams as far as the talent gets them, that's just ridiculous. How many times has OSU won 4 Big Ten basketball titles in a 6 year span? What were they supposed to do, win 6 in a row? Go undefeated in the Big Ten? The tournament is always different every year, it doesn't exist in a vaccuum where the regions are equally balanced in terms of difficulty and teams should go to the F4 just because they have one of the best teams they have had. Matta was unlucky that Florida was returning their entire starting 5 from a team that won the NC the prior season, or else he would probably have an NC already - but that's how it is in college basketball, some years the teams at the top of the sport are better than others. Florida had 3 lottery picks. Matta just took an OSU team with one draft pick to the F4, Izzo took a team with a #1 seed and one draft pick (who won Big Ten POY over Sully) to the S16 - obviously Izzo doesn't take his talent to where he's supposed to in the tournament, right? Coach K is the winningest coach in college basketball, but his #2 seed Duke lost to #15 seed Lehigh last year - clearly Matta is so uniquely flawed because he had a year where his team didn't go as far as people expected.
Davey, the real idiocy in your statement that Matta is flawed because he doesn't take his talent as far as they're supposed to go or "only" takes them as far as he should is that EVERY coach in college basketball that is around for more than a year has disappointing years and teams that disappoint in the tournament - that is not a unique flaw or legitimately something to criticize Coach Matta in particular about because you can make the exact same argument against any coach in the entire sport. It is interesting how you frame your argument to rag on Matta, because I guess it's much harder to argue against Matta if you shift the argument away from the negative aspect and compare accomplishments. If you had considered the accomplishments a coach's teams have had and where those accomplishments stack up against his peers over a similar time period, and used that as the main factor in your evaluation of coaches, you would understand that your arguments don't really have any weight behind them. EVERY coach loses games. EVERY coach fails to get his team to the F4 more often than not. NOBODY roots for their team to "go as far as their talent" or "go farther than their talent," they root for their teams to achieve big things like go to the F4 and win conference titles, which is what Matta's teams have done repeatedly. Get a grip on reality, Davey.
Not playing Ross does have benefits on D, but not playing Ross does have a positive effect on the offensive side in the sense that this OSU team has shown it can be turnover-prone (especially when not having Craft and Scott out there together), and Ross is the most turnover-prone player on the team. He has been just as much of a non-entity on offense at times as Smith and Thompson.
The real problem with this team isn't the lack of big minutes for Ross, it's not having a very good big man. If Sully were still on the team they would have won at least 3 more games than what they have at this point, even with Ross playing as little as he has or less. It is an enormous drop-off from Sully to Rav/Amir.