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- Thread starter Golferdow01
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crazybuckfan40
Head Coach
Not sure if anyone heard the call-in show tonite, with Thad, but there were a couple interesting tidbits he gave.
First he said Tressel sends him a text-message b4 every game. He also said they have an offense called the Holmes and Ginn show or something to that effect and said that he tells the team everyday that need guys like Hawk and Carpenter to play D.
He also said Harris is really coming around on the defensive end, which is really good to hear.
And best of all he said, that when he hears ppl in columbus asking him if he is going to leave to go to a better bball school, he has to convince them that he is already at one.
Matta is a great coach.
First he said Tressel sends him a text-message b4 every game. He also said they have an offense called the Holmes and Ginn show or something to that effect and said that he tells the team everyday that need guys like Hawk and Carpenter to play D.
He also said Harris is really coming around on the defensive end, which is really good to hear.
And best of all he said, that when he hears ppl in columbus asking him if he is going to leave to go to a better bball school, he has to convince them that he is already at one.
Matta is a great coach.
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I am happy that contract constraints explain his legalese in earlier remarks. I believe this guy can put the ghost of Fred Taylor to rest and Taylor and Rupp may have been the two best coaches of that era. He's that good.
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crazybuckfan40
Head Coach
I couldnt agree more. He has won everywhere he has been and now he is starting to bring in the top talent in the country so, the losses are going to be few and far between like they have been this year.
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Golferdow01
East-Coast Living
I think Williams could have done it as well, but of course he left for his alma mater.
Matta will definitely do so
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akronbuck
Legend
I was there when williams was and there were a few stories why he left.I know cause of his college but, there was something added to it.
Ayers was the worst recruiter . I use to watch those AAU and all state teams play eachother all the time and Ayers was never there watching like everyother college coach was being seen at them.
Matta has a chance to be another coach K (DUKE) type of coach. He makes the best out of all. I hope he's able to keep his assistant coaches around for years to come because, they are great recruiters to , like Matta.
Onething that I could not understand in the past was about OSU recruiting a bunch of BB players to play at the value/schott arena with it being so top class compared to most the other top programs.Why wasn' t OSU coaches able to bring in anyother top players before MATTA was
I think its better then the gund arena by far and this is for college players not millionaires
Ayers was the worst recruiter . I use to watch those AAU and all state teams play eachother all the time and Ayers was never there watching like everyother college coach was being seen at them.
Matta has a chance to be another coach K (DUKE) type of coach. He makes the best out of all. I hope he's able to keep his assistant coaches around for years to come because, they are great recruiters to , like Matta.
Onething that I could not understand in the past was about OSU recruiting a bunch of BB players to play at the value/schott arena with it being so top class compared to most the other top programs.Why wasn' t OSU coaches able to bring in anyother top players before MATTA was
I think its better then the gund arena by far and this is for college players not millionaires
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Catfish Biff's
Wimpy loves to eat hamburgers
With Tennessee tanking down the stretch, Thad Matta should be replacing Bruce Pearl as frontrunner for the National Coach of the Year award.
Jim O'Brien should have won that award in his second season as OSU's head coach as well (and ended up beating the Coach who did win the award in the Elite 8).
Jim O'Brien should have won that award in his second season as OSU's head coach as well (and ended up beating the Coach who did win the award in the Elite 8).
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BuckeyeBiz
All-American
COY lock
Bruce Pearl has had a hell of a season with UT but Matta has done more in a better league than the SEC.
Bruce Pearl has had a hell of a season with UT but Matta has done more in a better league than the SEC.
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
Dispatch
3/3/06
3/3/06
RUMBLINGS
Friday, March 03, 2006
BOB HUNTER
</IMG>
Even if Ohio State doesn’t rip up men’s basketball coach Thad Matta’s contract after two years and give him a new one to make sure he’s even happier here than he says he is, Matta just earned an extension anyway.
One of the incentives in the deal Matta signed last March adds a year to the contract if he wins a Big Ten championship, which the Buckeyes did Wednesday night at Northwestern. That will extend the contract through the 2013 season.
The clause also gives Matta a $20,000 bonus for winning the title, and he will get another $40,000 when the Buckeyes receive an NCAA Tournament bid March 12. Reaching the Sweet 16 would net him another $20,000, a run to the Final Four $20,000 on top of that. A national championship would be worth an additional $70,000.
Matta’s guaranteed income this season, before bonuses, is $1.02 million.
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Buckeyes27
Go Bucks! Go Cavaliers!
Money is money, and if he really wanted money would he really be coaching OSU? i dont know, but he is a great coach and right now that is all that matters
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crazybuckfan40
Head Coach
Hell he only gets 70k if he wins the NC. That is one hell of a bargin.
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Chicago Tribune
3/5
Scarlet fervor
Thad Matta's roots extend deep into Downstate Illinois, but it hasn't taken him long to become the toast of Ohio (State)
By David Haugh
Tribune staff reporter
Published March 5, 2006
HOOPESTON, Ill. -- At 4:36 a.m. Wednesday--Thad Matta remembers the clock face like he would a scoreboard--the Ohio State basketball coach sprang out of bed in his Evanston hotel room to see who in the name of Woody Hayes was buzzing his cell phone.
Jim Tressel was forgiven quickly.
"Coach Tressel [text-]messaged me--hey, it was 5:36 his time [in Ohio]--and he gave me a strong message to relate to my team," recalled Matta, whose Buckeyes clinched a share of the Big Ten title later that night with a narrow victory over Northwestern. "I was so fired up after reading it, I couldn't go back to sleep."
Matta has supplied Big Ten coaches their share of sleepless nights this season, a surprising one the Buckeyes can wrap up Sunday with an undisputed league title if they beat Purdue at Value City Arena in Columbus.
In just his second season, the 38-year-old stands on the brink of delivering the so-called football school its first outright Big Ten basketball championship since 1992 and only its second in 35 years. Standing that close to history excites Jim Matta, Thad's dad who showed up Friday at Hoopeston High School for his daily 6 a.m. workout with more bounce in his step than usual.
"This is fun for us too," Jim said, wearing a red Ohio State hat and speaking for himself and his wife, Ellanat, who works in the school's business office.
A coach, teacher and athletic director at the school for 33 years until retiring in 2000, Jim Matta first started bringing Thad to work when the boy was still in diapers. One day as a toddler, Thad replaced the toy car his dad gave him with a basketball.
As the years passed, Jim's phone booth of an office, a brown tile floor surrounded by concrete walls, served as the basketball laboratory for the Matta's youngest son. If those walls could talk, they might ask whatever happened to the kid who never would leave.
After school, until his dad was done for the day, Thad would sit in front of the athletic director's desk and study the way his dad handled problems with coaches and players. He paid attention as coaches traded theories on the newest X's and O's, using those ideas to help form his list of goals he tacked on his bedroom wall.
"I knew as early as the 3rd grade that this is where I want to be," Matta said on the phone.
Where Matta is now is atop his profession, as one of just two Division I coaches to win 20 games in each of his first five seasons as head coach.
He has compiled a 144-47 record in six seasons at Butler, Xavier and now Ohio State by combining the charm of a common man with an uncommon work ethic passed along by a 66-year-old father who still fills in as a substitute bus driver to stay busy.
Jim Matta could only laugh relating how his son's motor seldom stops for anybody, not even Mom and Dad, who routinely make the five-hour drive from Hoopeston to Columbus.
"Between him recruiting the night before and his duties on game day, I think we got to speak to him exactly one minute last time we were there," Jim Matta said. "I'm hoping I get to ride home with him Sunday after the game so we get 15 minutes."
Thad Matta's 15 minutes are far from up.
Roots run deep
Along Main Street in this southeastern Illinois community of 6,000, six miles from the Indiana border, a boarded-up gas station has been abandoned so long a sign still advertises a gallon of unleaded for $1.58.
The most popular diner in town still does not accept credit cards, and Friday marked the opening at the downtown theater of "Brokeback Mountain," months after its release.
One of Illinois' most cutting-edge outposts, this isn't.
At least three factories have closed and hundreds of jobs have vanished in recent years, disturbing the peace of mind Vermilion County locals enjoyed for decades living in a place named for a prominent landowner and not the game that occupies so many winter weekend nights. Much has changed since the mid-1980s when basketball united a bustling community and Matta, who finished third in Illinois Mr. Basketball voting in 1985, led Hoopeston-East Lynn to two straight third-place finishes in the Class A state tournament.
Kevin Root, a high school teammate of Matta's who is now Hoopeston's athletic director and basketball coach, recently made a videotape copy of an '85 tournament game for a friend when he noticed something funny.
"Thad was telling players what to do, talking to officials all the time," Root said. "He's the same person he was in high school, except now he's wearing dress clothes and has a little less hair."
The sign welcoming visitors to Hoopeston says, "People Who Care About You," and Thad Matta believes the words are more a way of life than a slogan.
Growing up in a place where he could ride his bike after dark without worry developed a trust in people that, for example, helps him break the ice quickly with recruits and their parents. Knowing people on the block well enough to say hello honed a folksy, conversational skill at which Matta excels.
"You learned to interact with people and be yourself," he said of life as a kid in Hoopeston.
Athletics helped sharpen an edge beneath Matta's soft exterior. The bigger the school Matta faced, whether it was at Hoopeston, or at Butler and Xavier, the bigger the chip on his shoulder felt.
"Always being the guy or the team from the small town in high school going up against the Danvilles or going up to play the guys in Chicago, it was there," Matta said. "I think I've always had that chip going against the `big guy."'
That isn't the only way Matta has stayed the same since he was a teenager. After the victory over Northwestern, Jim Matta saw an Ohio State official rush his son around to postgame commitments when something familiar happened.
"Thad stopped to talk to a bunch of little kids waiting for him, just like he used to in high school," Jim Matta said.
It brought to mind the newspaper clipping Jim sent his son recently that Thad tucked into his desk and close to his heart.
"Part of the article said, `A person will not remember what you said or what you did, but he will never forget how you made them feel,"' Jim Matta said. "I don't think Thad will ever change his small-town ways."
Always learning
Nebraska coach Barry Collier, who coached Matta for one season at Butler and later added him to his staff, thinks those small-town ways have contributed to big-time success in the profession. Unlike some coaches whose large egos match their paychecks, Collier pointed out Matta adjusts his game plan each season around the talent on his roster.
"It's not like it's Thad's round hole and he's going to hammer a square peg into it," said Collier, who recommended Butler hire the 32-year-old Matta in 2000 when he left to take over at Nebraska. "He lets kids play to their strengths and he learned that over the years."
Some of those lessons also came from North Carolina State coach Herb Sendek, who hired Matta to his first full-time job as an assistant coach at Miami (Ohio) in 1994.
"What stood out was Thad's passion," Sendek recalled. "He was always asking questions about a new play and was always inquisitive. I'm not really surprised at all."
Nor will anybody in college basketball be surprised if Matta's name continues to be mentioned in connection with the opening at Indiana, despite his stated desire to remain in Columbus as long as his bosses want him.
Uncertainty over an upcoming NCAA ruling on improprieties during predecessor Jim O'Brien's tenure have clouded the future, which still includes the remote possibility that the NCAA could rule the Buckeyes out of this year's NCAA tournament. A postseason ban for 2007 would give one of the nation's top recruiting classes, the "Thad Five"--including center Greg Oden--the option to go elsewhere without penalty.
"I'm not going to lie, it has taken its toll," Matta said. "The biggest challenge is don't make us guilty by association. We didn't do it."
The negative recruiting he has heard about as a result of the probe makes Matta want to pull out what thinning hair he has left. But Matta has not let that or any other job hassle consume him at home since the day during his first season as a head coach when he spent eight hours alone in his office at Butler stewing after a loss on a last-second shot that snapped an 18-game home winning streak.
"I thought I had ruined the program," the father of two daughters said. "When I finally got home that night, I heard the feet of my [1-year-old] daughter running across the floor to see me. She could not have cared less whether we won or lost. That helped put things in perspective for me right there, and I think I still have it."
----------
[email protected]
3/5
Scarlet fervor
Thad Matta's roots extend deep into Downstate Illinois, but it hasn't taken him long to become the toast of Ohio (State)
By David Haugh
Tribune staff reporter
Published March 5, 2006
HOOPESTON, Ill. -- At 4:36 a.m. Wednesday--Thad Matta remembers the clock face like he would a scoreboard--the Ohio State basketball coach sprang out of bed in his Evanston hotel room to see who in the name of Woody Hayes was buzzing his cell phone.
Jim Tressel was forgiven quickly.
"Coach Tressel [text-]messaged me--hey, it was 5:36 his time [in Ohio]--and he gave me a strong message to relate to my team," recalled Matta, whose Buckeyes clinched a share of the Big Ten title later that night with a narrow victory over Northwestern. "I was so fired up after reading it, I couldn't go back to sleep."
Matta has supplied Big Ten coaches their share of sleepless nights this season, a surprising one the Buckeyes can wrap up Sunday with an undisputed league title if they beat Purdue at Value City Arena in Columbus.
In just his second season, the 38-year-old stands on the brink of delivering the so-called football school its first outright Big Ten basketball championship since 1992 and only its second in 35 years. Standing that close to history excites Jim Matta, Thad's dad who showed up Friday at Hoopeston High School for his daily 6 a.m. workout with more bounce in his step than usual.
"This is fun for us too," Jim said, wearing a red Ohio State hat and speaking for himself and his wife, Ellanat, who works in the school's business office.
A coach, teacher and athletic director at the school for 33 years until retiring in 2000, Jim Matta first started bringing Thad to work when the boy was still in diapers. One day as a toddler, Thad replaced the toy car his dad gave him with a basketball.
As the years passed, Jim's phone booth of an office, a brown tile floor surrounded by concrete walls, served as the basketball laboratory for the Matta's youngest son. If those walls could talk, they might ask whatever happened to the kid who never would leave.
After school, until his dad was done for the day, Thad would sit in front of the athletic director's desk and study the way his dad handled problems with coaches and players. He paid attention as coaches traded theories on the newest X's and O's, using those ideas to help form his list of goals he tacked on his bedroom wall.
"I knew as early as the 3rd grade that this is where I want to be," Matta said on the phone.
Where Matta is now is atop his profession, as one of just two Division I coaches to win 20 games in each of his first five seasons as head coach.
He has compiled a 144-47 record in six seasons at Butler, Xavier and now Ohio State by combining the charm of a common man with an uncommon work ethic passed along by a 66-year-old father who still fills in as a substitute bus driver to stay busy.
Jim Matta could only laugh relating how his son's motor seldom stops for anybody, not even Mom and Dad, who routinely make the five-hour drive from Hoopeston to Columbus.
"Between him recruiting the night before and his duties on game day, I think we got to speak to him exactly one minute last time we were there," Jim Matta said. "I'm hoping I get to ride home with him Sunday after the game so we get 15 minutes."
Thad Matta's 15 minutes are far from up.
Roots run deep
Along Main Street in this southeastern Illinois community of 6,000, six miles from the Indiana border, a boarded-up gas station has been abandoned so long a sign still advertises a gallon of unleaded for $1.58.
The most popular diner in town still does not accept credit cards, and Friday marked the opening at the downtown theater of "Brokeback Mountain," months after its release.
One of Illinois' most cutting-edge outposts, this isn't.
At least three factories have closed and hundreds of jobs have vanished in recent years, disturbing the peace of mind Vermilion County locals enjoyed for decades living in a place named for a prominent landowner and not the game that occupies so many winter weekend nights. Much has changed since the mid-1980s when basketball united a bustling community and Matta, who finished third in Illinois Mr. Basketball voting in 1985, led Hoopeston-East Lynn to two straight third-place finishes in the Class A state tournament.
Kevin Root, a high school teammate of Matta's who is now Hoopeston's athletic director and basketball coach, recently made a videotape copy of an '85 tournament game for a friend when he noticed something funny.
"Thad was telling players what to do, talking to officials all the time," Root said. "He's the same person he was in high school, except now he's wearing dress clothes and has a little less hair."
The sign welcoming visitors to Hoopeston says, "People Who Care About You," and Thad Matta believes the words are more a way of life than a slogan.
Growing up in a place where he could ride his bike after dark without worry developed a trust in people that, for example, helps him break the ice quickly with recruits and their parents. Knowing people on the block well enough to say hello honed a folksy, conversational skill at which Matta excels.
"You learned to interact with people and be yourself," he said of life as a kid in Hoopeston.
Athletics helped sharpen an edge beneath Matta's soft exterior. The bigger the school Matta faced, whether it was at Hoopeston, or at Butler and Xavier, the bigger the chip on his shoulder felt.
"Always being the guy or the team from the small town in high school going up against the Danvilles or going up to play the guys in Chicago, it was there," Matta said. "I think I've always had that chip going against the `big guy."'
That isn't the only way Matta has stayed the same since he was a teenager. After the victory over Northwestern, Jim Matta saw an Ohio State official rush his son around to postgame commitments when something familiar happened.
"Thad stopped to talk to a bunch of little kids waiting for him, just like he used to in high school," Jim Matta said.
It brought to mind the newspaper clipping Jim sent his son recently that Thad tucked into his desk and close to his heart.
"Part of the article said, `A person will not remember what you said or what you did, but he will never forget how you made them feel,"' Jim Matta said. "I don't think Thad will ever change his small-town ways."
Always learning
Nebraska coach Barry Collier, who coached Matta for one season at Butler and later added him to his staff, thinks those small-town ways have contributed to big-time success in the profession. Unlike some coaches whose large egos match their paychecks, Collier pointed out Matta adjusts his game plan each season around the talent on his roster.
"It's not like it's Thad's round hole and he's going to hammer a square peg into it," said Collier, who recommended Butler hire the 32-year-old Matta in 2000 when he left to take over at Nebraska. "He lets kids play to their strengths and he learned that over the years."
Some of those lessons also came from North Carolina State coach Herb Sendek, who hired Matta to his first full-time job as an assistant coach at Miami (Ohio) in 1994.
"What stood out was Thad's passion," Sendek recalled. "He was always asking questions about a new play and was always inquisitive. I'm not really surprised at all."
Nor will anybody in college basketball be surprised if Matta's name continues to be mentioned in connection with the opening at Indiana, despite his stated desire to remain in Columbus as long as his bosses want him.
Uncertainty over an upcoming NCAA ruling on improprieties during predecessor Jim O'Brien's tenure have clouded the future, which still includes the remote possibility that the NCAA could rule the Buckeyes out of this year's NCAA tournament. A postseason ban for 2007 would give one of the nation's top recruiting classes, the "Thad Five"--including center Greg Oden--the option to go elsewhere without penalty.
"I'm not going to lie, it has taken its toll," Matta said. "The biggest challenge is don't make us guilty by association. We didn't do it."
The negative recruiting he has heard about as a result of the probe makes Matta want to pull out what thinning hair he has left. But Matta has not let that or any other job hassle consume him at home since the day during his first season as a head coach when he spent eight hours alone in his office at Butler stewing after a loss on a last-second shot that snapped an 18-game home winning streak.
"I thought I had ruined the program," the father of two daughters said. "When I finally got home that night, I heard the feet of my [1-year-old] daughter running across the floor to see me. She could not have cared less whether we won or lost. That helped put things in perspective for me right there, and I think I still have it."
----------
[email protected]
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