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TEAM UNITY
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Ohio State head basketball coach Thad Matta and guard Aaron Craft (4) embrace as time down in the Buckeyes’ 77-70 victory over the Syracuse Orange in the men’s NCAA East Regional final in Boston. Matta’s blowup at a February practice inspired his young team to evaluate where it was headed, which turned out to be all the way to the Final Four and a meeting with Kansas on Saturday.
Coach Thad Matta’s blowup at February practice inspired young Ohio State team to evaluate where it was headed
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS
The season was spiraling away, the players didn’t seem to care and Thad Matta had had enough.
So, as he watched his team stumble lackadaisically through practice on the eve of a big game, the Ohio State coach snapped. Stop, day’s over, head home, he told them.
Not so fast, Coach.
Led by William Buford, the team’s lone senior, the Buckeyes pushed back, decided to finish practice on their own.
“I didn’t let us leave,” Buford said. “I told them we need to stay here and keep practicing, that’s all there was to do. There was no sense in going home. We needed to stay together and show Coach that we really wanted to be here.”
Sparked by that we’ll-show-coach moment of solidarity and buoyed by a refresher-course team meeting, the Buckeyes have made a run into the Final Four.
Following a loss to Wisconsin the day after Matta’s outburst, Ohio State (31-7) has won eight of nine games and is playing its best basketball at the right time.
The Buckeyes have found the confidence that was missing during an ugly stretch in February that had Matta wondering if they could even get past the first round of the NCAA tournament.
“There was a lot of finger-pointing going around. There was some adversity; we weren’t playing as well as we thought we should be,” point guard Aaron Craft said. “There were guys just not taking responsibility for their actions, and he tried to kick us out. I think we did a good job of fighting back. Since the last week of the season, it’s been a better team mind-set, and we’ve dealt with adversity a lot better.”
The Buckeyes opened the season with some decent expectations, thanks to Jared Sullinger’s decision to return for his sophomore season. Still, they were young and inexperienced, with 11 underclassmen on the roster.
Ohio State was a smooth-shifting machine early in the season, the only losses were on the road to Kansas — without Sullinger — Indiana and Illinois.
Then, the Buckeyes seemed to get discombobulated.
Sullinger started complaining about the way officials were calling games and seemed bothered by teams playing physical defense. The entire team became more selfish, sometimes not even knowing what play was being run or where to be on the court.
In position to take a two-game lead in the Big Ten with six left on Feb. 11, the Buckeyes labored in a 58-48 loss to Michigan State, shooting 26 percent while scoring 29 points below their average.
The Buckeyes bounced back with a road win against Minnesota but followed with a 56-51 loss at Michigan and still seemed to be in a funk despite beating Illinois.
Facing a huge game against Wisconsin the next day, one that could determine the Big Ten championship, the Buckeyes should have been focused and ready for an intense practice on Feb. 25.
Instead, they labored through it, prompting their coach to blow his stack and tell them to go home.
It was a big risk with a crucial game the next day, but Matta couldn’t sit around and watch his team fritter away what he thought could be a good season.
“We’ve always tried to set the stage of how we practice is how we play — at high speed, we don’t stop. It takes guys a little longer to get the intensity and what we’re trying to get,” Matta said. “And it took this team took a little while to understand.”