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

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sorry but anybody that thinks coach matta is just a great recruiter and not a great coach just doesn`t understand basketball..just look at the talent he had on his first big ten championship team, look at his first season at osu when he beat a juggernut undefeated illinois team with deron williams and co he did that with iowa type talent. in my opinion his greatest strength is not recruiting is player development.
 
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Sarcasm font? Well, here it is!

[sarcasm]If he wins national championships the next three years, then I'll think of him as a great coach. [/sarcasm]

He's a great recruiter and you don't go 39-2 without being an excellent coach. I defer to others to measure the relative merits of each, but I am very pleased that he is Ohio State's coach!
 
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Bob Hunter commentary: Matta molds a program that's worthy of Taylor
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
By Bob Hunter
The Columbus Dispatch

When Ohio State earned a huge road victory at Minnesota on Sunday, my thoughts turned to Eldon Miller. Seriously. I mentioned this in a phone conversation later, and probably got what I deserved.

"Who's Eldon Miller?" my friend said.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. The former OSU coach turned out to be more of a question than the answer, so this 30-something guy had no reason to know how he had once been expected to restore the program to the elite status it once held under Fred Taylor.

Miller was only one of many who tried and failed to do that before Thad Matta took over in 2004 and started to make it look easy. Maybe that's why my mind spit out those faded, gray images of Miller. I know it's not easy at all.

Taylor set a high standard. His teams won five straight Big Ten titles with one national title and two national runners-up finishes from 1959-64, had three so-so years and then won two of the next four Big Ten titles, with a second- and third-place finish in between. OSU was regarded as one of the elite basketball programs in the nation at that point, so when the program started to slide near the end of Taylor's 18 years as coach, Buckeyes fans were desperate to get that status back.

Cont...
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http://www.dispatch.com/live/conten...-matta-returns-osu-to-prominence.html?sid=101
 
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This is Thad's 11th season as a head coach. In those 11 years he has:


-11 straight years with 20+ wins, while only finishing twice with fewer than 24 wins in a season.

-9 trips to the NCAA tournament -- 8 of the 9 teams made it past the first round, with 1 Sweet Sixteen (OSU), 1 Elite Eight (X), and 1 NCAA Championship game (OSU) finish.

-Of the 2 years a Matta-led team didn't make the NCAA tourny, one Ohio State was forced to sit-out because of penalties handed down by the NCAA and one ended in a NIT Championship. All 4 years he coached a mid-major, they went to the Big Dance and made at least the 2nd round.

-7 conference championships (1 with Butler, 2 with Xavier, and 3 with Ohio State with 1 in progress)

-6 1st round picks in the NBA draft (and counting), all drafted in the last 4 years (G.Oden, M.Conley, D.Cook, K.Koufos, B.Mullens, E.Turner)

-5 former assistants became head coaches at other schools (John Groce- Ohio U., Sean Miller- Arizona, Alan Major - Charlotte, Todd Lickliter - Iowa, Brad Stevens - Butler)

-5 conference tournament championships (1 with Butler, 2 with Xavier, 2 with Ohio State)

-4 1st team Big Ten players (T.Dials x1, M.Conley x1, G.Oden x1, E.Turner x2)

-1 consensus 1st team All-American and National Player of the year (E.Turner)

...and this is all before adding this year's team to the awards list.




Elite coach?
 
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The answer is A. When the man speaks, it's like he's channeling Tressel. IMO, there's a very good chance that in twenty years he'll have at least 2 national championships at OSU and will be looked at as the Kryszewski of his coaching generation.
 
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Ohio State coach Thad Matta was a Hoosiers fan when Indiana ran the table
Published: Friday, February 11, 2011
By Doug Lesmerises, The Plain Dealer

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Terry Gilliam l Associated Press
Thad Matta was a fan of the undefeated Hoosiers team, but he's trying to make his own history with the Buckeyes.

COLUMBUS, Ohio ? For 8-year-old Thad and the rest of the Matta family, it was a Sunday ritual, as it was for any other group of Hoosier basketball fans of that era. Get home from church, sit down and watch Bob Knight's Sunday afternoon coach's show.

In 1976, there wasn't better programming a basketball fan could find, and growing up near the Indiana border in Hoopeston, Ill., Thad Matta came of age with the team his Ohio State Buckeyes are now trying to replicate.

Asked Friday about his first memories as a basketball fan, the coach of 24-0 Ohio State talked about the 32-0 Indiana Hoosiers of 1975-76. They included a freshman named Scott Eells, a Hoopeston native who amplified the attention on Knight's team in Matta's hometown. But with an appreciation passed down from his father, Jim, a high school coach and administrator, young Thad would have loved them anyway.

"He was like my idol," Matta said of Eells. "So, I just, at that point, started saying that was the team right there. You had [Quinn] Buckner, [Scott] May, [Kent] Benson, [Tom] Abernethy. That was a great team, obviously."

Cont...
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http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2011/02/ohio_state_coach_thad_matta_wa.html
 
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