• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

Thad Matta (OSU's All Time Winningest Coach & 3x B1G COY, Butler HC)

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
http://www.1460thefan.com/tf.php?story=dispatch/2004/07/07/20040707-D1-01.html

OHIO STATE COACHING SEARCH
Matta to interview at OSU
Xavier coach enters mix after Stallings, Wilson visit
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH


Two down. Two to go? Or is Thad Matta the one? After idling through the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Ohio State’s search for its next men’s basketball coach shifted back into a higher gear yesterday when Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings and Rice coach Willis Wilson toured the Schottenstein Center and interviewed for the job with OSU president Karen A. Holbrook.
One or two more candidates will be interviewed in Columbus today, and a source familiar with the search, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to The Dispatch late last night that one is Matta, who led Xavier to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament last season.

Holbrook will make the final call on who will replace Jim O’Brien, who was fired after seven seasons June 8 for violating NCAA rules by giving a recruit $6,000. The announcement could come today or Thursday, when the summer recruiting period begins at camps in Atlanta, Indianapolis and Teaneck, N.J.

Sources told The Dispatch and WBNS-TV (Channel 10) that Stallings toured the Schottenstein Center on Monday night and was seen there again yesterday morning with former OSU standout Bill Hosket, a member of the committee advising athletics director Andy Geiger.

Wilson had a 90-minute tour of the facility later in the day and arrived with Geiger at Holbrook’s home for a 6 p.m. interview.

Word leaked last night that university officials had a surprise in store today. It turned out to be Matta, who said last week that he was not a candidate but has never definitively ruled out taking the job if it were offered to him.

Speculation when the search began was that high-profile candidates such as Matta would not want to antagonize their current employers by becoming involved in a drawn-out process but might listen to an offer. It was not known last night whether Ohio State plans to make Matta an offer after his interview.

Others who could be interviewed today are Los Angeles Lakers assistant Jim Cleamons, a Linden graduate and former Ohio State player; Pennsylvania coach Fran Dunphy; and OSU interim coach Rick Boyages, who has kept the program up and running since O’Brien’s dismissal. None of the three is known to have been contacted for an interview, however.

Cleamons and Dunphy, like Stallings and Wilson, were interviewed outside Columbus last week by Geiger; associate athletics director Miechelle Willis, who oversees the basketball program; and John Bruno, faculty representative to the athletics department.

Junior center Terence Dials, the team captain next season, said after leaving Wilson’s interview yesterday that the questions he had concerned "how he coaches players and player development. That’s what I’m worried about for next year."

Stallings, 43, was runner-up to O’Brien when Geiger last hired a men’s basketball coach seven years ago. He is 208-132 in 11 seasons as a head coach, including 85-69 the last five at Vanderbilt. The Commodores were 23-10 last season, when they reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

Stallings has Big Ten bloodlines, having played and coached under Gene Keady at Purdue in the early 1980s.

Wilson, 44, is 169-175 in 12 seasons as a head coach, all at Rice. He worked for one year at Stanford as an assistant to Mike Montgomery, whom Geiger hired at Stanford when he was athletics director there.

Matta, 36, is 102-31 in four seasons as a head coach, including 78-23 in three years at Xavier. He was coach at Butler for one year.
Click to expand...
 
Upvote 0
I think it's the right move. Matta was one of the front runners from day one. AG is not not caving into pressure, if that was the case Booby EGO night would have gotten the job. I think Matta has probably been on the back burner the whole time. I would have been happy with a new coach. If it is Matta, I will become estatic.
 
Upvote 0
Thad Matta (Official Thread)

Hopefully this isn't a dupe to the other Matta threads which address whether or not he is coming. This one is geared to discussing who this guy is.

This is the most complete Bio I could find, although it is a year out of date:

http://athletics.xu.edu/mbasketball/coaches.cfm?program=Mens%20Basketball

Here is an article on his being named coach of the year:

http://athletics.xu.edu/weekly_notes/read_news.cfm?news_id=2008

And here is the article that will make him a bit controversial right off the bat (and likely be used for some negative recruiting as well):

http://www.enquirer.com/xavier/2004/06/30/xu1a.html

Quick follow up on Matta recruiting.

He just got signed LOIs from Churchill Odia, #18 ranked PG in the country, and Josh Duncan, #17 rated power forward. Both were rated at four stars. He also had a three star recruit in this class.

This year he has a verbal from B J Raymond of Toledo, #17 rated shooting forward and another four star recruit.

Will any of these guys pull a Scoonie?

Don't know, but if not I would hope none of those currently on board at OSU will bail with Matta at the helm.

In any case, those three recruits were rated higher than anyone OSU has landed since Ivan Harris (although Terwilliger and Butler were close).

In 2003 Matta also landed the # 14 rated shooting forward (yet another four star) along with two three star recruits, including the #23 rated power forward.

He has recruited kids from Ohio, Kentucky, NC, Indiana, Oklahoma, Maryland, and Virginia.

Not bad for what is commonly considered the second best school in Cincinnatti.
 
Upvote 0
Congrats to the Bucks and Matta for this. I hope for everybody's sake that everything has been disclosed about the scandal stuff, and that nothing get sprung on him after he becomes comfortable in Columbus.
 
Upvote 0
Thad Matta (Official Thread)

espn

Matta is expected to bring two of his Xavier assistants with him to Ohio State. Alan Major, who worked under Matta the past three years, wore a name tag that identified him as an Ohio State coach at a clinic and camp in Indianapolis on Thursday. Another Xavier assistant, John Groce, also is expected to join the staff.
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top