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

[Meyer]

No other coach has done so much while reloading year after year than Thad Matta. Good luck!

fify

 

[GeorgiaBuck2]

i bow down to the greatness that is thad matta.



Thad Matta Testified Under Oath That The Fab Five Were Not The Best Recruiting Class Of All Time

Fucking hilarious.

 

[Gatorubet]

6. Cincinnati: Charles Manson was born in Cincinnati. FACT: He is the nicest, most levelheaded person to come out of
that city. I again point out to you that Cincinnati had race riots ten years ago. Not forty years ago. Not thirty. Fucking
2001! I think they only integrated buses last week. Cincinnati is like its own giant time portal. You step into the town, and
suddenly it's forty years ago, and races are fighting, and people are littering, and you can smoke inside, and everyone is
drinking Tang and shit. It's an abominable place.

 

[SEREbuckeye]

No other coach has done so much while rebuilding year after year than Thad Matta. Good luck!

No kidding. Matta has had solid teams year after year at OSU with little coaching hardware to show:

05-06: 26 wins, Conference Regular Season Champ, NCAA Second Round

06-07: Loses Dials, Sullinger, Foster, Sylvester - 34 wins, Conference Regular Season & Tourney Champ, NCAA Championship Appearance

07-08: Loses Oden, Conley, Cook, Harris, Lewis - 24 wins, NIT Champ

08-09: Loses Koufos, Butler, Hunter - 22 wins

09-10: Loses Mullens - 29 wins, Conference Regular Season Champ & Tourney Champ, Sweet 16

10-11: Loses Turner, Hill, Madsen - 32 wins, Conference Regular Season Champ & Tourney Champ, #1 Overall Seed

1 Consensus All-American
2 Big Ten Player of the Year's
3 Conference Tournament Championships
4 Regular Season Conference Championships
5 NCAA Tournament Appearances
5 First Team All-Big Ten's
7, 20+ win seasons


3 Big Ten Coach of the Year's, 0 National Coach of the Year

 

[Buckeye Maniac]

6. Cincinnati: Charles Manson was born in Cincinnati. FACT: He is the nicest, most levelheaded person to come out of
that city. I again point out to you that Cincinnati had race riots ten years ago. Not forty years ago. Not thirty. Fucking
2001! I think they only integrated buses last week. Cincinnati is like its own giant time portal. You step into the town, and
suddenly it's forty years ago, and races are fighting, and people are littering, and you can smoke inside, and everyone is
drinking Tang and shit. It's an abominable place.

No you certainly cannot! We're not that backwards!

 

[Buckskin86]

Ohio State basketball coach Thad Matta has his team in the spotlight: Bill Livingston
Published: Thursday, March 17, 2011
By Bill Livingston, The Plain Dealer

Joshua Gunter l The Plain Dealer
Ohio State coach Thad Matta, here with senior David Lighty at The Q, is right at home building a basketball power at a football school.

CLEVELAND, Ohio ? When C.M. Newton made basketball something to watch at Alabama until spring football rolled around, he considered retirement until Bob Knight told him, "You shouldn't quit until you've coached at a basketball school."

Thad Matta doesn't understand that kind of thinking.

"When I was at Xavier, I was probably the biggest college football fan you could ever find because there was nothing to do on Saturdays," said Matta, the tremendously successful coach of an Ohio State basketball team seeded first overall in the NCAA Tournament.

Newton went on to find happiness and the bigger share of the spotlight at Vanderbilt. Matta went on to Ohio State, where football is the Current, Next, and Forevermore Big Thing.

"I became the biggest Ohio State fan," Matta said. "I had never been to a game in the 'Shoe and the first game I went to [in 2006], Cincinnati kicked off to us and we went [three] and out, and when the punter was running off the field, 105,000 people were booing. I remember saying to myself, 'What have I got myself into?' "

Football is the spotlight, stage, scenery, sound system and prop warehouse. Basketball, although Matta denies it, is the understudy, waiting for its chance. Today, at about 4:40 p.m., in a second-round game against Texas-San Antonio, its moment arrives.

"I love where we are known as a 'football-basketball' school," said Matta. "Coach [Jim] Tressel said once that our goal is to win a national championship in football and basketball the same year. And I was like, 'Yeah, that's going to happen.' And I'll be darned, year three, we both played for it and didn't get it done."

Cont...

http://www.cleveland.com/livingston/index.ssf/2011/03/post_22.html

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfuZj390MAA"]YouTube - Alone With Rome: Thad Matta[/ame]

 

[Buckskin86]

Thad Matta's Illinois hometown may be dying, but its love for the Ohio State coach never will
Published: Friday, March 18, 2011
By Doug Lesmerises, The Plain Dealer

Doug Lesmerises, The Plain Dealer
The town sign in Hoopeston, Ill., with a cornfield in the background. The sign calls Matta "Big 10 coach," because many residents are fans of the Illinois Fighting Illini.


HOOPESTON, Ill. -- Nearly half the town would shoehorn into the high school gym, 2,500 people pressing against the walls along the baseline and squeezing into the upper bleachers that have been torn out now because they're no longer needed.

Those not there by halftime of the JV game risked not getting in at all, because in a rural town of 6,000 with one movie theater, a skating rink and a McDonald's, a night in the basketball bleachers was the social event of the week.

In 1985, Hoopeston knew what it had in its high school basketball team and what it had in Thad Matta; knew it had one of the best teams in Illinois and one of the best players in Illinois, a 6-foot-4 guard who was the most obvious future head coach any of them had ever seen.

Hoopeston knew it because during those games every Friday and Saturday night, and most of the waking moments during the week, the boys basketball team was the thing Hoopeston loved most about itself. The cheers were so loud, the team manager bought an airhorn to signal substitutions because no one could hear the buzzer.

That team lives on in a hallway trophy case outside the gym and in the scrapbooks they all have somewhere in their homes, in the former players who stayed in Hoopeston and spend Friday nights in those same now half-full stands, and in one former player who left town and just might lead Ohio State to a national title.

Twenty-six years later, Hoopeston still knows what it had back then.

Because now it's gone.

"That was the pinnacle. Everything has kind of gone downhill since then," said Russ Leigh, the radio voice of Hoopeston basketball for 15 years whose accounting office sits at the center of town. "The economy started to go down, basketball hasn't been as big in the school since, everything kind of peaked at that time."

Cont...

http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2011/03/thad_mattas_hometown.html

 

[DZ83CK]

No kidding. Matta has had solid teams year after year at OSU with little coaching hardware to show:

05-06: 26 wins, Conference Regular Season Champ, NCAA Second Round

06-07: Loses Dials, Sullinger, Foster, Sylvester - 34 wins, Conference Regular Season & Tourney Champ, NCAA Championship Appearance

07-08: Loses Oden, Conley, Cook, Harris, Lewis - 24 wins, NIT Champ

08-09: Loses Koufos, Butler, Hunter - 22 wins

09-10: Loses Mullens - 29 wins, Conference Regular Season Champ & Tourney Champ, Sweet 16

10-11: Loses Turner, Hill, Madsen - 32 wins, Conference Regular Season Champ & Tourney Champ, #1 Overall Seed

1 Consensus All-American
2 Big Ten Player of the Year's
3 Conference Tournament Championships
4 Regular Season Conference Championships
5 NCAA Tournament Appearances
5 First Team All-Big Ten's
7, 20+ win seasons


3 Big Ten Coach of the Year's, 0 National Coach of the Year

I believe he's had the 3 winningest seasons in OSU history - 35, 32+, and 29 wins.

 

[Buckskin86]

Turnaround is remarkable in Matta's 7 years at OSU
By RUSTY MILLER, AP Sports Writer
Associated Press March 22, 2011

Columbus, Ohio (AP) --

It's hard to even recall how bleak things were at Ohio State seven years ago when Thad Matta took over as head basketball coach.

"It wasn't good," Matta said of the woeful culture of the program.

Jim O'Brien had been summarily dismissed for giving a recruit money, NCAA investigators were sniffing around campus and ready to drop the hammer on the Buckeyes and on top of everything else there wasn't all-world talent in the pipeline.

Now the top-ranked Buckeyes (34-2) are the No. 1 overall seed and on a roll coming off second- and third-round wins by a combined 61 points heading into Friday night's regional semifinal showdown with Kentucky (27-8) in Newark, N.J.

How fitting that when he first arrived at Ohio State, Matta used Kentucky as one of the templates for what he wanted to construct.

"When I came here, I looked at what a Kentucky had done, what a North Carolina had done, and those things weren't built over night, and not in a decade. It took several decades," the thinning-haired, 43-year-old native of the aptly named Hoopeston, Ill., said Tuesday. "When we came in here seven years ago, Ohio State had a 51-percent winning percentage in the Big Ten. We knew we had our work cut out for us in building this thing."

But how has Matta turn around the program?

Satch Sullinger, father of Matta's current star post player, Jared, is a legendary high school coach in Columbus. His son, J.J., also played for Matta at Ohio State. He tells a story that sheds light on how Matta treats his players ? and why he might just be the best recruiter in the nation.

"Thad Matta coaches the whole kid," Sullinger said. "When Jim O'Brien was fired, he wrote out a map for the guys to come to his house to give them the news. They'd never been there before. Thad Matta wasn't in that position (at Ohio State) for two weeks before he had his whole team over to his house. It's family. He coaches family. He doesn't coach a basketball team."

Cont...

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/03/22/sports/s115939D69.DTL#ixzz1HMaD07H2

 

[Bigjimmie]

I never understood what was the rush to name the Coach of The Year". They did that in the B10 and we were left with Painter who "choked" on 3 of his last 4 games or so, and back when Jim OBrien was playing his team in the final 8 and final 4 they gave it to the Auburn coach who OBrien beat in the tournment! For Thad Matta not to have been coach of the year in the B10 this year was a joke beyond jokes. 34-2, 16-2 in the B10, wins the crown by 2 games..etc....

 

[Buckskin86]

Matta's energy, magnetism have helped restore Ohio State basketball to a spot among nation's elite
Thursday, March 24, 2011
By Bill Rabinowitz
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Thad Matta walked into his first meeting with his new team seven years ago. The Ohio State men's basketball coach was stunned by the dispirited look in his players' eyes.

Matta had just replaced Jim O'Brien, who had been fired for giving $6,000 to a recruit. Five years after a Final Four appearance, the program had slid into mediocrity. NCAA sanctions were looming.

"The morale and the self-esteem were probably as low as I had ever seen in a room," Matta said.

As he had contemplated leaving Xavier for Ohio State, Matta studied Buckeyes basketball history. The program had won only 51 percent of its Big Ten games. Basketball success in Columbus, he discovered, had not been sustained for more than a few years since under Fred Taylor in the 1960s.

He believed he could change that. This year is proof that he has.

The Buckeyes, who play Kentucky in an East Regional semifinal on Friday, are in the Sweet 16 for the second straight year and are the NCAA Tournament's overall No. 1 seed.

An NCAA runner-up finish in 2007 with a team featuring Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr. showed that Matta could lead a team to greatness. This year's success has proven that Matta has built a program to last.

Though coaching at Ohio State has obvious advantages - vast financial resources, first-class facilities and its status as the biggest school in a population-rich state - Matta has also overcome many obstacles.

He's not a former star college player who can lure recruits based on fame or comes from a well-known coaching pedigree. He has fought back and foot injuries that would have forced out many coaches. He's coaching at a school where another sport is king. And he has had to retool every year because of early entries to the NBA, including last season's national player of the year, Evan Turner.

Yet Ohio State has established itself as an elite program. This is how Matta has done it.

Cont...

The Matta years

Ohio State's record in seven seasons under coach Thad Matta:


SEASON RECORD POSTSEASON
2004-05 20-12 none
2005-06 26-6 NCAA second round
2006-07 35-4 NCAA title game
2007-08 24-13 NIT champion
2008-09 22-11 NCAA first round
2009-10 29-8 NCAA regional semifinal
2010-11 34-2
TOTALS 190-56

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/sports/stories/2011/03/24/winning-touch.html?sid=101

Matta builds a winner, and does it his way
Thursday, March 24, 2011
The Columbus Dispatch

Kentucky coach John Calipari missed it by one syllable. "Beat" should have been "be at ." As in: Thad Matta does not want to be at Kentucky.

Why Lexington, Ky., when Ohio State has become a model of success, and without the noses of Kentucky fans pressing against the glass of your life in the Big Blue Zoo?

But Calipari enjoys being the center of attention, so it was no surprise that during his Tuesday radio show he arrogantly dismissed the notion that UK would sneak up on Ohio State. The Wildcats, seeded No. 4., play the No. 1 Buckeyes on Friday in an NCAA East Regional semifinal in Newark, N.J.

"(Teams) want to be us. Understand that: They want to be us, not beat us. Be us," Calipari said. "So they're coming at you, trying to say, 'You win against Kentucky, it shows that we're them.'"

Matta, who knows Calipari fairly well, was not put off by the comments, which, taken in context, can be seen as a coach simply feeding the Kentucky faithful what they want to hear. But Matta came back on the topic with a touch of touch.

"I don't know exactly what he meant by that," Matta began. "I think if he's saying I want to be at a great academic institution - take athletics out of it - and to have a group of great upperclassmen that I would let lead my or anyone else's children here, and great freshmen talent and the maturity those guys have, and for a team that truly loves each other and enjoys being around each other. For me, if he has where you wake up every day and want to spend time with your team, if (the Wildcats) have that - I feel we've got that, too."

Cont..

http://www.dispatch.com/live/conten...lds-a-winner-and-does-it-his-way.html?sid=101

 

[Buckskin86]

'Hoops and Scoops' blog: Quotes rescued from the cutting room floor
Thursday, March 24, 2011
By Bill Rabinowitz
The Columbus Dispatch


The unfortunate reality of writing a longer story is that there always seems to be much more information that doesn't make the paper. The primary reason is space. The other is that it may not fit in the flow of the story.

That was certainly the case with my story on how Thad Matta has built the OSU basketball program for the long haul. For example, I talked to several of his assistants, including a lengthy interview with John Groce, now head coach at Ohio University, that didn't get in.

So rather than just let the worthwhile leftover material languish in my laptop, I figured I'd post it here.

So here goes, in no particular order, some interesting stuff, mainly quotes that didn't make it into the story.

Matta on not being much of a yeller: "There are times when I will. When I lose my mind, it's well-received that this is really, really important. I don't know why that is (that he seldom screams). Maybe it's the relationships I have, where I can go up to a guy and say, 'Do you really think this is going to get it done?' and they know."

Matta on coaching Evan Turner: "With Evan, I knew he was a great kid and I knew he was a competitive kid. He had a hard time channeling his energy. I told him, 'You guard yourself too much. When you get upset, you take yourself out of a play.' I never lost the faith with him. As every day went by, our relationship got closer and closer. I knew in time it was going to because he knew I was never losing faith in him."

Thad Matta on whether in his research before taking the job whether he found any particular reason OSU's basketball program hadn't had sustained success: "I didn't. Because you've had great coaches here. They've had a run of great players throughout the course of time. I tried to look at where guys were coming from recruiting-wise over the course of time. But there wasn't thing where I said, if we change THIS, we can be better.

Matta on coaching in the Big Ten: "Where I grew up (Hoopeston, Ill.), I was the biggest Big Ten fan you ever had. The ultimate dream I had was playing in the Big Ten. I wasn't good enough to do that. The second thing was, man I'd love to coach in the Big Ten."

Cont...

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/sports/stories/2011/03/24/hoops-and-scoops.html?sid=101

 

[colobuck79]

Any reference to Craft's dad and grilling is funny today for some reason.

Barbara Matta on one of his few non-basketball interests: "He enjoys reading and he's a very good chef on the Weber grill. He is a master of the Weber grill -- Charcoal, not the gas grill. Aaron Craft's dad gave him a fabulous recipe for cooking salmon on the grill."

 

[Dryden]

Any reference to Craft's dad and grilling is funny today for some reason.

I'm surprised Mrs. Matta would volunteer that information.

 

[BB73]

I'm surprised Mrs. Matta would volunteer that information.

Mr. Craft's Salmon recipes = Pearls of wisdom?